Factors influencing safety behaviours of construction workers

Abstract

Construction industry is known to be one of the most accident-prone of work sectors around the globe. Although the construction output is less in Sri Lanka, compared to developed countries in general, the magnitude of the accident rate in the construction industry is still significantly high. Most of the occupational accidents are due to the unsafe behaviours of the worker. Thus, studying the people factor in OSH is an effective way to manage OSH at work sites. The paper therefore focuses to investigate and prioritise the factors affecting construction workers’ safety behaviours. The study was structured in several steps. Initially in-depth knowledge gained regarding the research stream which was sorted upon the degree of relevance to the study. A total of 18 factors affecting construction workers’ safety behaviours were identified through an extensive literature survey. Data collection was carried out through a survey which consisted of two rounds. The first round was conducted to validate the factors found in literature; to the Sri Lankan context and in the second round, experts were asked to rate those factors according to their degree of influence. Experts’ rankings were used to calculate the Mean Score of Influence (MSI) of each factor and according to the MSI values, the factors were prioritised. Findings of the study revealed the most influencing personal factor was age while the most influencing organisational factor was OSH incentives. The least influencing factors were workmates’ safety concern and provision of PPE respectively under the categories, personal and organisational. These findings could be helpful in better understanding the construction workforce and in designing OSH systems for the construction industry.