The vast majority of accidents in construction are generated by unsafe behaviors. Some researches also find that the behaviors could be influenced by the awareness and safety climate. The safety behavior and awareness belong to individual levels, while the safety climate belongs to the organization level. Previous studies mainly focus on the relationships between safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior without considering their different respective levels and the interaction between levels. This study establishes a hierarchical linear model (HLM) of safety climate, individual safety awareness, and safety behavior to examine the multilevel relationships between them. Data were collected using questionnaire from workers in different teams on the construction site in China. The results indicate that organizational safety climates affect individual safety behavior and safety awareness. In addition, there is a positive correlation between individual safety awareness and safety behavior, and the safety climates have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between them. The final conclusion offers a path for the current practice of safety management in the construction industry.
Statistics show that the construction industry is still facing safety problems, which is well worth studying. Figure
Construction accident statistics in China from 2003 to 2016.
An analysis of the causes of construction accidents in China shows that unreasonable management, illegal operations, and labor indiscipline are responsible for more than 70% of the total number of accidents. It reveals that the vast majority of accidents are caused by people, which means that the risk of accidents and injuries can be reduced by safety behavior [
This paper focuses on the safety management in construction, aiming to improve the current situation. From the individual and organizational perspective, it is significant to analyze the relationship between safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior. The hierarchical linear model (HLM) is used to explore the influences that the safety climate has on safety awareness and safety behavior. Suggestions are put forward to improve safety management.
In the construction industry, safety climate is often described as the organizational members’ perceptions of the value placed on safety by management [
The safety climate has different ways of division on its dimensions according to the previous studies. Bosak et al. [
The measurement items for safety climate varied in previous studies. As such, there is no consensus about the factor structure of the safety climate [
According to the reviews of previous studies and the actual situation, this paper takes the definition that safety climate refers only to the workers’ perception on the value of safety in the work environment, which is at the level of organization. The safety climate in this paper is mainly divided into three dimensions, including managers’ attention, project safety environment, and safety supervision with seven items.
The organizational safety climate defines the perception of the value of safety in the work environment, which in turn affects individual behavior. In order to address the effect that the safety climate at the organizational level has on the individual awareness and behavior, and the relationship between them, the following hypotheses are developed.
Safety awareness refers to an “individual’s own awareness of safety issues” [
The present study has examined the relationship between safe behavior and safety awareness. Choi et al. [
Safety awareness has a significant positive effect on safety behavior.
Safety climate has a significant positive effect on safety behavior.
Safety climate has a significant positive effect on safety awareness.
Safety climate has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between individual safety awareness and safety behavior, such that the relationship between safety awareness and safety behavior will be stronger when the safety climate is positive.
Finally, it creates a hierarchical-layer linear model that includes safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior. The individual level includes construction worker safety awareness and safety behavior as two variables. The organizational level includes the safety climate variable.
The research model is shown in Figure
Research model and hypotheses.
The survey instructions for the questionnaire were designed to ensure all employees, regardless of education level, understood the questions. It comprised four parts: personal information, safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior. The scales are constructed using a Likert five-point scaling technique with the survey respondents selecting a number from 1 to 5 as appropriate. The 1–5 scale represents “strongly disagree, little disagree, agree, little agree, and strongly agree,” respectively.
Brondino et al. [
According to the reviews on the safety awareness, this paper adopted it into three dimensions in the items design of questionnaire [
Neal and Griffin [
For this research, a formal survey was conducted by questionnaire from April 15, 2016 to May 18, 2016 among construction workers. In total, 164 questionnaires were received from 15 construction teams, respectively, and 96 of them were valid. Among the 96 respondents, 74 were common workers, 16 were construction team managers, and 6 were temporary workers. Because of the generally low cultural level of construction workers and the need to guarantee the authenticity and accuracy of results, a face-to-face survey form was selected for data collection.
The average age of the respondents was 42. The standard deviation was 7.621 (
Age of participants in the sample.
The respondents’ educational attainment was mainly at middle school (86.0%) and high school (14.0%) levels. The above data show that today’s construction workers in China have a generally low cultural status.
Respondents having worked from 5 to 10 years accounted for 14.0% of the total. From 10 to 15 years, it was 4.0%; from 15 to 20 years, 12.0%; from 20 to 25 years, 36.0%; from 25 to 30 years, 18.0%; and more than 30 years, 16.0%. A 36.0% majority of construction workers had been in the industry between 20 and 25 years.
According to the analysis of worker personal factors analysis on the construction industry’s safety climate, it found that the age, position, cultural status, and years of experience of workers will have a certain influence on the construction safety climate. Analysis pointed out that the perception of a construction site environment for temporary workers is lower than that for regular workers. When construction worker educational attainment is higher, the perception of climate is stronger. Safety awareness is lowest for a 35- to 45-year-old worker. For workers less than 35 years old and above the age of 45, it is higher. Progressively, after the age of 40, it rises. The number of years at work and the safety climate are positively related to the safety awareness and behavior. With the number of years at work being more than 20, the safety environment perception increases.
The respondents’ scores of safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior are illustrated in Table
The scores of safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior.
|
Min | Max | Average | Standard deviation | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Safety climate | 96 | 16 | 22 | 19.94 | 1.86 |
Safety awareness | 96 | 24 | 33 | 28.82 | 2.83 |
Safety behavior | 96 | 5 | 13 | 8.55 | 2.44 |
The scale of safety awareness is 40 points (8 questions, each counting for 5 points). The highest and lowest scores are 33 and 24, respectively. The overall average score is 28.82 points with a standard deviation of 2.83. Data in Table
The total score of construction worker safety behavior is 15 points. Data from Table
The collected quantitative data were further analyzed using HLM, which is also referred to as multilevel analysis or random coefficient models [
This research firstly established a null model to run the variance component analysis mainly used to observe dependent variables in construction at organization level and check for any statistically significant difference. The model is built in two levels:
The results of null model analysis are shown in Table
Null model.
Random effect | Standard deviation | Variance component | d.f. |
|
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
INTRCPT1, u0 | 2.06982 | 4.28415 | 14 | 213.98111 | <0.001 |
Level 1, |
1.38250 | 1.91132 |
The standard deviation and corresponding chi-square of estimate results all reached the significant level (
To find the relationship between safety climate, safety awareness, and safety behavior, we build four models based on the hypotheses using HLM.
In this model,
In the above model, the relationship between safety climate and safety behavior across construction teams by controlling safety awareness in Level 1 is represented. A
In the above model, the
In the above model,
The parameters of each model are shown in Table
HLM test on hypotheses.
Fixed effect | Coefficient | Standard error |
|
| |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hypothesis 1 | For INTRCPT1, |
||||
INTRCPT2, |
8.576128 | 0.534080 | 16.058 | <0.001 | |
For SCI slope, |
|||||
INTRCPT2, |
0.483790 | 0.144753 | 1.334 | 0.074 | |
|
|||||
Hypothesis 2 | For INTRCPT1, |
||||
INTRCPT2, |
8.576055 | 0.465875 | 18.408 | <0.001 | |
SC, |
0.669771 | 0.258886 | 2.587 | 0.023 | |
For SCI slope, |
|||||
INTRCPT2, |
0.048379 | 0.084009 | 0.576 | 0.057 | |
|
|||||
Hypothesis 3 | For INTRCPT1, |
||||
INTRCPT2, |
28.848258 | 0.541441 | 53.281 | <0.001 | |
SC, |
0.630526 | 0.300937 | 2.095 | 0.056 | |
|
|||||
Hypothesis 4 | For INTRCPT1, |
||||
INTRCPT2, |
8.576139 | 0.465916 | 18.407 | <0.001 | |
SC, |
0.669715 | 0.258900 | 2.587 | 0.023 | |
For SCI slope, |
|||||
INTRCPT2, |
0.192960 | 0.104170 | 1.852 | 0.068 | |
SC, |
0.150996 | 0.067154 | -2.249 | 0.027 |
From the analysis of hypotheses above, it is obvious that the safety climate of construction workers has a significant positive influence on safety behavior as influence coefficient is 0.67. And the safety climate also has a positive influence on safety awareness as influence coefficient is 0.63. It can be analyzed that the factor at organizational level can influence the factors at the individual level.
At the individual level, it is analyzed that the safety awareness of construction workers has a positive influence on safety behavior, with an influence coefficient of 0.48. What is more, a positive safety climate could strengthen the effect of construction worker safety awareness on safety behavior with an influence coefficient of 0.15. The safety behavior scores 8.55 points out of 15 on average, which indicates that the present safety level of construction worker behavior is unsatisfied. Therefore, strengthening the construction safety climate and safety awareness becomes a priority in the effort to reduce unsafe behavior among construction workers.
In conclusion, according to the results of hierarchical linear analysis, the four hypotheses are all supported, which means improving the individual safety awareness and the organizational safety climate could ultimately reduce unsafe behavior and accordingly make contribution to safety management in construction. A positive safety climate will make contribution to the individual safety awareness and behavior and then strengthen the relationship between them. As a result, it can be concluded that the safety management should not only concentrate on the individual behavior and awareness but also take safety climate into consideration. For instance, strengthening the leaders’ attention to safety, improving the construction project’s safety environment and the project safety supervision mechanism, and training and cultivating safety attitudes and participation are also helpful to reducing unsafe behavior of workers.
The detailed data of survey results used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.