Dual hierarchical modelling for the influence of job role demands on psychosocial safety behavior: Evidence from coal industry

Abstract

Psychosocial safety behavior has been indicated to be an important factor in ensuring workplace safety, but the forming mechanism of the psychosocial safety behavior of coal miners remains unclear. Considering the important impact of job role demands on psychosocial safety behavior and the dual attributes of job role demands in different contexts, this study constructs a dual hierarchical model of job role demands on psychosocial safety behavior in the coal-mining context, and explains the roles of personal resources (safety-related psychological capital) and job resources (psychosocial safety climate) in this model based on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory. Hierarchical nested data were gathered from 753 coal miners on 50 working teams. The Mplus modelling results demonstrate that job role demands manifesting as job hindrances negatively affect psychosocial safety behavior, and safety-related psychological capital mediates this impact. Moreover, as expected, the negative influence of job role demands on safety-related psychological capital and the indirect negative influence of job role demands on psychosocial safety behavior are both inverted to positive in a high-level psychosocial safety climate. The findings support the hindrance influencing mechanism of job role demands on psychosocial safety behavior considering the comprehensive influence of personal resources and job resources in the coal-mining context from the psychological perspective. A new management perspective and some intervention recommendations for coal mine work safety at the psychological level are proposed to promote the safety behavior of coal miners, which could then be used as a reference for other high-risk industries.