Demographic influences on safety consciousness and safety citizenship behavior of construction workers

Abstract

The number and scale of construction industry projects have developed rapidly worldwide. However, accidents in the industry still occur with unacceptable frequency leading to serious consequences for workers, companies and communities. Safety consciousness (SC) and safety citizenship behavior (SCB) have been identified as influential constructs that have the potential to play significant roles in improving personnel safety of construction workers. So far, the obviously important influences of demographic factors on the safety consciousness and safety citizenship behavior of construction workers have not been studied. To address this research gap, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey involving 532 Chinese construction workers was conducted to collect demographic data which were classified into subgroups according to personal characteristics to investigate the demographic differences between the two safety constructs.Significant differences between safety consciousness and safety citizenship behavior were found for different genders, education levels, and lengths of service. The safety consciousness and safety citizenship behavior of female workers were worse than for males. Male and female workers with lower education backgrounds showed poor SC and SCB levels. SC and SCB for both male and female workers were found to have an initial downtrend followed by an uptrend as length of service increased.These findings suggest that construction organizations should pay much more attention to vulnerable workers such as females, young males and poorly-educated workers. Managerial strategies are recommended to enhance the occupational safety of construction workers.