Safety Behavior among Construction Workers: Influences of Personality and Leadership
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147, Issue 4
Abstract
This study investigated whether the relationships of personality with safety compliance and safety participation remains significant when safety-specific transformational leadership is supplied by supervisors. It also tested the moderating role of this leadership in the personality–safety behavior relationship. One hundred twenty workers completed the Big Five personality test and graded their supervisors’ leadership, and the workers’ safety behavior was assessed by the supervisors. The results showed that conscientiousness was related positively with safety compliance. Contrary to our theorizing, agreeableness was related negatively with safety compliance. Leadership always positively related to safety compliance and participation, and it also attenuated the relationships of conscientiousness and agreeableness with safety compliance. This enhances the importance of considering safety leadership as an antecedent and intervention of employee safety behavior. However, conscientiousness and agreeableness remained related with safety compliance when safety leadership was considered simultaneously. These findings expand the limited research on the personality–safety behavior relationship in the construction field. Evaluating conscientiousness and agreeableness prior to recruitment can enable employers proactively to curtail unacceptable safety transgressions. Enhancing supervisors’ safety leadership helps to prevent employees from performing safety-related actions that are subject to individual dispositions.
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Data Availability Statement
Data for the final analysis in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 20YJCZH183), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 72002030 and 71772136), the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 19BGL281), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China (Grant No. BK20200383). We thank the participants in our survey. Special appreciation also is given to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on early versions of this article.
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Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147 • Issue 4 • April 2021
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Mar 31, 2020
Accepted: Nov 6, 2020
Published online: Feb 9, 2021
Published in print: Apr 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jul 9, 2021
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