Road Construction Workers’ Boredom Susceptibility, Habituation to Warning Alarms, and Accident Proneness: Virtual Reality Experiment
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 149, Issue 2
Abstract
Every year more than 100 fatal accidents occur in road work zones. One of the major causes of pedestrian workers being struck by construction vehicles is that workers become habituated to the warning alarms of these vehicles. Researchers suggest that workers with certain personality traits (e.g., boredom proneness and extraversion) are more likely to become habituated to workplace hazards and therefore have a higher likelihood than other workers of being involved in an accident. This study investigated which aspects of personality correlate with workers’ accident proneness and their vulnerability to habituation to warning alarms in road work zones. An experiment with actual road construction workers was performed using a virtual reality (VR) environment. The results reveal that boredom susceptibility (one of the subdimensions of the personality trait of sensation seeking) is negatively correlated with workers’ attention to warning alarms, and that boredom-prone workers were more likely to be involved in a virtual struck-by accident. The findings of this study provide conceptual motivation for tailoring safety training to individual workers’ personality traits.
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Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National Science Foundation (No. 2017019) and the Institute of Construction and Environmental Engineering (ICEE) at Seoul National University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 149 • Issue 2 • February 2023
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jun 17, 2022
Accepted: Oct 19, 2022
Published online: Dec 10, 2022
Published in print: Feb 1, 2023
Discussion open until: May 10, 2023
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