Impact of Safety Climate on Construction Workers’ Safety Behavior: Mediating Effect of Self-efficacy

Abstract

Unsafe behavior is the most cited cause of construction accidents. However, to further reduce accidents unsafe behavior should be taken as effect instead of cause. Among others, unsafe behavior can be driven by the work environment and the systems in place. Safety climate reveals the priority of safety assigned by the work environments and extant research suggests that a sound safety climate is a catalyst for safe behaviors. However, the way in which safety climate influences safety behavior needs to be further explored. After reviewing the literature about safety climate, self-efficacy and safety behavior, this paper introduced self-efficacy as a mediating variable into the effect of safety climate on safety behavior, and hence developed a “safe climateself-efficacysafe behavior” model. To validate the model, a large scale survey with construction workers was conducted. Using 110 valid responses, the model was estimated with the structural equation modeling technique with partial least squares (PLS-SEM). Results showed that self-efficacy plays a mediating role between safety climate and safety behavior. Suggestions were given accordingly.