Research gaps and source caveats — risk-aversion brief May 2026

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.

Documented gaps

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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).

Refinements of the foundation brief

Two foundation-brief ([[research-brief-psychology-gc-marketing-aversion-may-2026]]) claims this brief refines:

• 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.
• 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]].