Unpacking the Relationship between Safety Leadership and Safety Behaviors in the Construction Industry: Multistakeholder Perspective

Abstract

Safety leadership is regarded as a pivotal contributing factor to the reduction of accidents on construction sites. Nevertheless, previous literature dedicated insufficient attention to the underlying mechanism through which safety leadership fosters employee safety behaviors. Based on social exchange theory and multistakeholder perspective, this article evaluates whether, how, and when safety leadership increases construction workers’ safety behaviors. The authors collected two-wave data (one month apart) from 228 construction workers and adopted multiple linear regression analyses and Hayes’s PROCESS macro models to analyze the data. This study makes several contributions to the extant literature. First, drawing on social exchange theory, this study identifies the psychosocial mechanism by focusing on the mediating role of safety trust in the positive association between safety leadership and safety behaviors. Second, inspired by the multistakeholder perspective, the authors created an integrated research framework to highlight the multistakeholder nature of safety behaviors. A multitude of stakeholders within and outside construction companies (e.g., safety leaders, coworkers, and family members) are directly or indirectly involved in promoting employee safety behaviors. Third, this study is original because it assesses the moderating effects of coworker safety support and family motivation. The present research revealed that coworker safety support and family motivation both amplify the indirect relationship between safety leadership and safety behaviors through safety trust. Practically, this study suggests that safety leaders should proactively team up with coworkers and family members to promote employee safety behaviors.