Effects of construction workers’ safety knowledge on hazard-identification performance via eye-movement modeling examples training

Abstract

Most accidents in the construction industry are caused by a large proportion of hazards that remain unrecognized; this hazard-identification failure can be traced back to inadequate safety knowledge and ineffective education methods. Eye-movement modeling examples (EMMEs) show an expert’s gaze replays in the hazard-identification process with verbal explanations. Thus, with the fundamental objective of measuring the impacts of tacit and explicit safety knowledge on construction workers’ hazard-identification performance, this study demonstrated the moderation effect of EMMEs on this influence pathway. This study created a digital building construction site to conduct two eye-tracking experiments, and every participant completed a hazard-identification test before and after EMMEs training. The effect of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge on hazard-identification performance was explored in Study 1 and Study 2. The results demonstrated the potential of EMMEs to indirectly teach strategic identification sequences and contribute to deeper safety education, and the influence of individual safety knowledge on the effectiveness of EMMEs.