What Drives Workers into the Labor-Intensive Chinese Construction Industry: Profiling Motivational Diversity across Heterogeneous Groups

Despite increasing efforts by scholars and practitioners to address the longstanding labor shortages in the construction industry, a comprehensive understanding of why workers choose to enter the traditional labor-intensive industry and how to attract more high-quality workforce remains elusive. Grounded in person-environment fit and social capital perspectives, this study aims to empirically explore how job- and relationship-related factors jointly motivate workers to enter the construction sector and how these motivations vary across worker groups with different demographic and social backgrounds. Based on nationwide survey data from China, the results reveal that workers enter the construction industry not only out of economic rationality to pursue financial or developmental rewards, but also out of social needs to fulfill family caregiving responsibilities and gain social support from acquaintances due to the industry’s flexible project-based work arrangements and collective work-living patterns. The results also provide evidence that the strength of these motivations varies across workers with different demographic characteristics and social information contexts. For relatively disadvantaged groups, such as women, older generations, and those with lower education levels or prior farming experience, they are characterized by stronger financial and relationship-related motivations (e.g., support from or for acquaintances and family). By contrast, younger and more educated workers tend to have comparatively weaker financial and relationship-related motivations but place greater emphasis on developmental rewards. Moreover, positive social information toward the construction industry can also strengthen potential workers’ job- and relationship-related entry motivations. This study represents an exploratory effort of integrating both rational decision-making and social influence perspectives to empirically characterize the multifaceted industry entry motivations of construction workers. The findings contribute to a deepened understanding of how workers with heterogenous demographic characteristics and social information contexts balance financial, developmental, and social needs in their career choices for highly group-oriented jobs in the laggard construction industry.