A Study on the Factors Affecting Safety Behavior of Construction Workers

Abstract

Construction industry, being one of the most injury-prone industries worldwide in terms of serious injuries, lost work time, hospitalization, disability, and mortality, is in a great need to improve occupational safety. Behavior Based Safety (BBS) is an approach that can be applied successfully in managing occupational safety; it is gaining more interest across industry sectors globally and has the great advantage of needing the involvement of the individual employee. This paper, therefore, aimed to investigate the factors governing construction workers' safety behavior. The factors which affect construction workers' safety behavior were identified through a comprehensive literature survey. Expert interviews were conducted in order to validate and generalize the factors found in literature to the Sri Lankan context. Two categories of factors were basically identified which affect the safety behavior of construction workers, namely personal and organizational. The personal factors included age, marital status, education level, working experience, haling dependents, and safety knowledge. Study indicated that personal factors such as habits and soda l life might also have an impact on a workers safety behavior yet need longitudinal research before generalizing to a particular context. Organizational factors identified were management commitment, OSH systems and feedback mechanisms, continuous monitoring of these systems, training and awareness for workers, accidents reporting and workforce empowerment. The findings of this research were modeled in a model of construction workers' safety behavior. The findings of this study can be used in enhancing the safety performance of the construction industry.