A preliminary study on a country risk analysis for international construction

International construction projects are often exposed to various and complex risks related to the political, economic, social, and cultural issues of host countries. These factors usually have negative effects on the cost and schedule performances. Despite this, most previous research on international construction has focused on risk at a project level rather than a country level. In addition, the current country risk (CR) indices that are supported by financial institutions cannot effectively reflect the specific features of the construction industry. Accordingly, this research aims to conduct an analysis of CR that takes into account the nature of international construction. For this purpose, we first used a comparative literature review to develop a hierarchy for assessing CR levels. We then attempted to indirectly evaluate individual risk factors using 51 types of secondary data. We integrated performance data from 1,223 projects conducted by Korean contractors in 33 countries to construct a CR database. Next, diverse statistical techniques were used to conduct a CR analysis. In particular, a multiple regression analysis was utilized to investigate the causal relationships between risk influencing factors and profit performances. The results revealed the critical risk factors for each country group and indicated the quantitative effect they had on profit performances. The analysis outlined can provide practitionerswith an opportunity to consider CR in the context of the construction industry.