Safety Culture aboard Tankers

Abstract

The present paper focuses on safety culture aboard Norwegian-owned tankers. During the summer and autumn of 2002, a questionnaire was distributed in a self-administered format to 1159 seafarers aboard 58 tankers owned by seven shipping companies. To determine which factors comprised a safety culture, the collected data from the tankers were factor analyzed, and four factors were identified. The factors were validated by using regression analysis. Several hypotheses were tested using General Linear Model (GLM) and post hoc tests. The results showed significant differences between ship owners, sailors' occupations, the sailors' country of origin and the age of the sailors, between flags/registers and between age of vessels, but not between different types of tankers.