Complexity of occupational health in the hospitality industry: Dynamic simulation modeling to advance immigrant worker health

Abstract

Hispanic immigrant workers, who are heavily employed in low-skill/low-wage lodging and foodservice jobs, work in environments that induce disproportionate health and safety risks. Traditional research approaches have produced only partial insights into the risks of Hispanic immigrant hospitality sector workers, failing to fully capture the underlying dynamic, structural, and systemic complexity of hospitality worker health. This paper has three objectives: (1) to outline the multifaceted and disproportionate health and safety risks of these workers; (2) to introduce a systems paradigm with potential to contribute to more promising approaches in occupational health and safety research in tourism and hospitality; and (3) to elaborate on how computational simulation modeling can fortify occupational health and safety research in tourism and hospitality, and offer a heuristic example of a risk prevention model among Hispanic immigrant hospitality workers rooted in a stakeholder-based system dynamics modeling approach.