Role of Safety Attitude: Impact on Hazard Recognition and Safety Risk Perception: Fid-Bau Portal

Role of Safety Attitude: Impact on Hazard Recognition and Safety Risk Perception

Kashmiri, Davood / Taherpour, Farshid / Namian, Mostafa / Ghiasvand, Ebrahim

Construction is one of the most hazardous industries. Construction workers fail to identify a large proportion of hazards in their workplaces and underestimate the associated safety risk of hazards that they identified. Past research has shown that the safety attitude of construction workers plays a key role in their safety performance. However, the impact of safety attitude of workers on their hazard recognition and safety risk perception has yet to be empirically tested. To bridge the gap in knowledge, the current study aimed to quantify the impact of workers’ safety attitude on two key indicators of their safety performance: hazard recognition and safety risk perception. One-hundred and thirty-five construction workers from several active construction projects located in the Middle East region participated in the study. The safety attitude of workers was measured using a verified instrument. Then, a set of pre-evaluated construction case images were presented to the workers to quantity their hazard recognition and safety risk perception. Statistical analysis of the data revealed that construction workers who had a positive safety attitude (a standardized safety attitude above the average) identified a higher percentage of hazards and perceived a higher level of safety risk compared to the workers with a negative safety attitude (a standardized safety attitude below the average). The results of this empirical attempt are aligned with past research emphasizing the role of safety attitude in the safety performance of construction workers. The findings can help professionals and practitioners to implement safety practices that foster safety attitude of construction workers.