Improving the antecedents of non-compliance to safety regulations toward an optimized self-regulated construction environment in Nigeria

Abstract

The construction industry has been plagued with safety challenges, resulting in a wide occurrence of devastating accidents and fatalities. As previous studies have attributed the persistent safety challenges in Nigeria to non-compliance to safety regulations, this study builds on the existing literature by assessing the antecedents of non-compliance to safety regulations amongst construction workers. To achieve this, the study pursued two main objectives which involved the assessment of workers’ safety attitude and workers’ safety behavior as the antecedents of safety regulation compliance. A quantitative research approach was adopted using a questionnaire to elicit responses from randomly selected respondents. Data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings from the study showed relatively low levels of safety attitude and behavior amongst construction workers, which limit their ability to be comply to instituted safety regulations. Thus, improving the attitude and behavior of construction workers toward better compliance was recommended.