Perceiving Interactions on Construction Safety Behaviors: Workers’ Perspective

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic approach that incorporates structural equation modeling (SEM) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to perceive and verify causal-relationships and interactions between enablers and goals of construction workers’ safety behaviors (CWSB). A sample of 450 questionnaire surveys regarding CWSB was collected from construction workers in several Chinese construction companies. EFA was used to extract eight common factors in order to identify the model structure among 28 questionnaire items. Then, SEM was employed to investigate the interrelationships among variables in the hypothesized safety behavior model. The built causal model was verified in terms of the hypothesis test and goodness-of-fit test. The impact of the path coefficient on CWSB was investigated and analyzed in detail. Results indicate that management-oriented supervision and system (F3) and leadership (F8) exert obvious positive impacts on CWSB in accordance with the path coefficients analysis, whereas psychological workers’ condition (F5) and workplace conditions (F6) exert obvious negative influences. Individual differences among workers (F2) do not perform statistically significantly with workers’ safety behaviors. The developed approach is capable of revealing causal-relationships, testing hypothesized models, and determining leading factors in complex project environments. This research provides insights into cause-effect relationships among the workers’ perceived influential factors and goals, and the results can be used to understand the factors that the construction workers perceive as important factors in safety behaviors. This can further provide decision support on the improvement of construction safety performance in the context of the Chinese construction industry.