Psychological Conditions of Construction Workers: Key Determinants for Safety Perceptions and Behaviors

Abstract

The Korean construction industry has experienced a high level of industrial accidents and the consistently increasing accident rate. Many safety studies have focused on investigating factors which influence safety incidents and identifying the causal relationships between factors: components, determinants, and antecedents. Although many safety research emphasized that the 3E (Enforcement, Education, and Engineering) approach is a potential solution to enhance workplace safety, there should be benefits to consider psychological (i.e., Emotional) effects on the safety performance since most construction works are human-oriented. Thus, understanding construction workers psychological conditions can be a priority. This research aimed to explore stress (job stress and stress coping style), personal temperament, emotional disturbance (depression and trait anxiety), and drinking habit (alcohol use disorder) that can influence workers safety. The research conducted a survey of 396 respondents from road, bridge, tunnel, subway, and apartment construction sites by using the measurement tools in clinical psychology and the safety models developed by Griffin and Neal (2000). The research first analyzed the overall psychological tendency between different personal background of construction workers including demographic information, employment status, work types, working experiences, and wage conditions. The study then investigated highly-related psychological factors which influenced both safety perception and safety behavior, and identified mediating effects among psychological conditions, safety perception, and safety behavior. The research findings are expected to promote awareness of psychological problems in the construction industry and suggest opportunities for on-site safety enhancement through psychological intervention.