Employees’ Safety Perceptions of Site Hazard and Accident Scenes

Abstract

Despite the improvement of digital technologies (e.g., building information modeling) in enhancing construction safety management, human factor–related issues such as individual perceptions, attitudes, and behavior in safety cannot be downplayed. Existing studies have adopted safety management approaches that address human-factor issues by defining safety climate. From safety climate research, it is evident that certain demographics or subgroup factors can significantly affect safety management. This study aimed to investigate how individual perceptions of safety hazards would be affected by the given hazard’s own feature (e.g., probability of occurrence). In addition, the study explored the impacts of subgroup demographic factors (e.g., job position and experience level) on safety perceptions. Eight commonly encountered site hazard/accident scenes were predefined according to their occurrence, severity, and visibility. A site survey approach was adopted to investigate how construction employees from different demographic subgroups rated the degree of danger of the eight predefined scenes. The follow-up statistical analysis revealed that (1) a hazard/accident scene with higher occurrence and lower severity caused a higher variation among employees’ opinions in perceiving its degree of danger; (2) entry-level employees tended to evaluate hazards with a higher degree of danger; and (3) compared to early career employees and senior peers, the mid-career professionals tended to perceive a lower degree of danger of a given hazard/accident scene. This study contributed to the body of knowledge in construction safety by investigating the effects of the given hazard/accident’s feature (e.g., occurrence) in employees’ perceptions, as well as integrating different scenes of safety hazards in the subgroup analysis based on employees’ job duties or work trades and their experience levels. Future research is also recommended to address individuals’ safety perceptions and demographic factors in safety management.