We examined the influence of assessors' professional power and social connections on their decision making regarding evaluation for funding of new business projects, as well as the moderating effect of the assessors' own job security. Using 1,517 observations from 2017 Beijing Innofund data, we found that the assessors' professional power and social connections were both positively related to their evaluation scores. The job security of the assessors significantly positively moderated the effect of their social connections, but the moderating effect of job security on their professional power was nonsignificant. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Project expert evaluation is the backbone of public funding allocation. A slight change in score can push a proposal below or above a funding line. Academic researchers have discovered many factors that may affect evaluation decision quality, yet the subject of cognitive proximity towards decision quality has not been considered thoroughly. Using 923 observations of the 2017 Beijing Innofund data, the study finds that cognitive proximity has an inverted “U-shape” relation to decision-making quality. Moreover, two contextual factors, evaluation experience and evaluation efforts, exert moderation effects on the inverted U shape. These findings fill the gaps in the current research on cognition-based perspective by specifying the mechanism of cognitive proximity in the evaluation field and contributing to improving decision-making quality by selecting appropriate evaluators. Theoretical contributions and policy implications have been discussed.