Safety Behavior among Construction Workers: Influences of Personality and Leadership

Abstract

This study investigated whether the relationships of personality with safety compliance and safety participation remains significant when safety-specific transformational leadership is supplied by supervisors. It also tested the moderating role of this leadership in the personality–safety behavior relationship. One hundred twenty workers completed the Big Five personality test and graded their supervisors’ leadership, and the workers’ safety behavior was assessed by the supervisors. The results showed that conscientiousness was related positively with safety compliance. Contrary to our theorizing, agreeableness was related negatively with safety compliance. Leadership always positively related to safety compliance and participation, and it also attenuated the relationships of conscientiousness and agreeableness with safety compliance. This enhances the importance of considering safety leadership as an antecedent and intervention of employee safety behavior. However, conscientiousness and agreeableness remained related with safety compliance when safety leadership was considered simultaneously. These findings expand the limited research on the personality–safety behavior relationship in the construction field. Evaluating conscientiousness and agreeableness prior to recruitment can enable employers proactively to curtail unacceptable safety transgressions. Enhancing supervisors’ safety leadership helps to prevent employees from performing safety-related actions that are subject to individual dispositions.