Researchers at Southeast University Target Risk Management (A dual perspective on risk perception and its effect on safety behavior: A moderated mediation model of safety motivation, and supervisor’s and coworkers’ safety climate)

2019 DEC 09 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Current study results on Risk Management have been published. According to news originating from Nanjing, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Previous studies have acknowledged the impact of risk perception on safety behavior, but were largely controversial. This study aims to clarify this conflict and the mechanism through which risk perception can have an impact on safety behavior.”

Financial supporters for this research include National Natural Science Foundation of China, Research Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education of China, Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Southeast University, “From the perspective of the dual attribute of the job demand concept in job demands-resources theory, we posit that risk perception can be considered as a job hindrance or a job challenge depending on the context, thereby resulting in a negative or positive impact on safety behavior, respectively. The current research context is the construction industry and the hypotheses were tested using hierarchically nested data collected from 311 workers in 35 workgroups. Risk perception was demonstrated to be a job hindrance exerting a negative impact on safety behavior and safety motivation mediated this effect. In addition, two dimensions of group-level safety climate--supervisor’s and coworkers’--were expected to alleviate or even reverse the detrimental effects of hindrance risk perception on safety motivation and on safety behavior via motivation. A moderation model and a first-stage moderated mediation model were established, respectively, for testing the moderating roles of safety climate in the relationship between risk perception and safety motivation, and in the indirect relationship of risk perception with safety behavior via motivation. Surprisingly, contrary to the hypotheses, when supervisor’s safety climate changed from a low level to a high level, the impact of risk perception on safety motivation changed from positive to negative, and the negative effect of risk perception on safety behavior via safety motivation was not alleviated but worsened. As expected, for workers in a positive coworkers’ safety climate, the negative effect of risk perception on motivation and the indirect negative effect of risk perception on behavior were both reversed to the positive. This indicates that coworkers’ safety climate helped to change perceived risk from a job hindrance to a challenge. This research contributes to workplace risk perception and safety behavior research by theoretically viewing risk perception as a dual job hindrance-challenge concept and proposing two competing hypotheses concerning the impact of risk perception on safety behavior. The empirical investigation confirmed the hindrance attribute of risk perception in the construction context. It provides a theoretical framework and empirical evidence for future research to synthesize the conflict risk perception-safety behavior relationship.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “We also contribute to the literature by pointing out the potential negative role of certain supervisor safety activities such as paternalistic leadership in influencing employee safety.”

For more information on this research see: A dual perspective on risk perception and its effect on safety behavior: A moderated mediation model of safety motivation, and supervisor’s and coworkers’ safety climate. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2019;134():105350. Accident Analysis & Prevention can be contacted at: Pergamon-Elsevier Science LTD, the Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Accident Analysis & Prevention - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/accident-analysis-and-prevention/)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from N. Xia, Dept. of Construction and Real Estate, School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, No 2 Southeast Road, Jiangning District, Nanjing 211189, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Q. Xie, X. Hu, X. Wang and H. Meng.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2019.105350. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention is: Pergamon-Elsevier Science LTD, the Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

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