{"id":1131,"slug":"risk-aversion-brief-research-gaps-may-2026","title":"Research gaps and source caveats — risk-aversion brief May 2026","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["psychology-aversion","behavioral-economics","entrepreneur-cognition"],"reference_body":"**Where claims in this brief stand on weaker ground.** When Candid content makes a claim that intersects one of these gaps, label it directional or applied-inference, not verified.\n\n## Documented gaps\n\n1. **GC-specific loss-aversion coefficients.** [[brown-imai-vieider-camerer-2024-meta-analysis-lambda-1955]] finds substantial variance in λ across populations but does not break out construction, trades, or owner-operator subpopulations. We cannot confidently claim GCs as a population show higher (or lower) λ than the meta-analytic mean of 1.955.\n\n2. **Empirical work on adjudication's effect on contractor cash-flow cognition.** ODACC's operating data exist ([[odacc-five-year-operating-data-fy2020-fy2024]]) but no academic or industry research found on whether adjudication availability has measurably changed how GCs evaluate cash-flow risk or vendor exposure. Five years of data may not yet have generated relevant studies.\n\n3. **Construction-industry-specific time-discounting estimates.** [[frederick-loewenstein-odonoghue-2002-hyperbolic-discounting]] documents wide variance in discount rates across consumption types and populations, but we did not find construction-owner-specific estimates.\n\n4. **The \"once burned\" pattern at the within-GC level over time.** The competence-vs-integrity violation literature ([[kim-ferrin-cooper-dirks-2004-competence-vs-integrity-trust-repair]]) is laboratory-based. No field studies tracking GC owners through a vendor failure and into subsequent vendor selection were found.\n\n5. **Ontario-specific seasonality in marketing decision-making.** [[chba-hmi-q4-2025-ontario-10pt4-record-lows]] documents builder sentiment quarterly but does not segment marketing/vendor expenditure decisions by season.\n\n6. **Confidence interval on the in-house overconfidence effect for owner-operator construction.** The overconfidence literature is robust at the level of \"entrepreneurs are more overconfident than corporate managers\" ([[busenitz-barney-1997-entrepreneur-vs-manager-overconfidence]]) but no quantitative work specifically on owner-operator construction businesses evaluating in-house alternatives to professional services was found ([[overconfidence-in-house-comparator-pattern-for-gc-pitches]] is therefore applied inference).\n\n## Refinements of the foundation brief\n\nTwo foundation-brief ([[research-brief-psychology-gc-marketing-aversion-may-2026]]) claims this brief refines:\n\n- **λ magnitude.** Foundation brief used canonical λ ≈ 2:1. Brown et al. 2024 puts the empirical mean at 1.955. Future Candid copy should reflect this — defensible as rough magnitude but not precise multiplier.\n- **Loss-framing.** Foundation brief recommended explicit loss-framing. This brief refines: *bounded* loss-framing works, *implicit/unbounded* loss-framing fails. See [[bounded-vs-implicit-loss-frame-distinction]] and [[rule-replace-implicit-with-bounded-loss-framing]].","rationale_body":"Honest catalog of where the brief's claims stand on weaker empirical ground, so that Candid writers and salespeople can mark applied-inference claims as such rather than presenting them with the same confidence as verified findings. Also documents the two refinements this brief makes to the foundation brief.","metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"research-brief-risk-aversion-post-failure-may-2026","title":"Research brief: risk aversion, loss aversion, and post-failure decision patterns in GC and trades-business decision-makers (May 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[]},"created_at":"2026-05-25T13:13:31.118Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T13:13:31.118Z"}