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Research Article
Research Article
Relations between Safety Climate, Awareness, and Behavior in the
Chinese Construction Industry: A Hierarchical
Linear Investigation
Copyright © 2018 Mudan Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The vast majority of accidents in construction are generated by unsafe behaviors. Some researches also find that the behaviors
could be influenced by the awareness and safety climate. The safety behavior and awareness belong to individual levels, while the
safety climate belongs to the organization level. Previous studies mainly focus on the relationships between safety climate, safety
awareness, and safety behavior without considering their different respective levels and the interaction between levels. This study
establishes a hierarchical linear model (HLM) of safety climate, individual safety awareness, and safety behavior to examine the
multilevel relationships between them. Data were collected using questionnaire from workers in different teams on the con-
struction site in China. The results indicate that organizational safety climates affect individual safety behavior and safety
awareness. In addition, there is a positive correlation between individual safety awareness and safety behavior, and the safety
climates have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between them. The final conclusion offers a path for the current
practice of safety management in the construction industry.
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behavior. Suggestions are put forward to improve safety factor structure of the safety climate [7, 16]. Zohar and
management. Luria’s [17] organizational-level safety climate scale con-
sisted of a quantitative measure of employees’ global per-
ceptions, and the survey with 6-item is about how safety
2. Materials and Methods is managed and addressed within their organization. Flin
and Mearns [16] defined the “big five” themes of safety
2.1. Safety Climate. In the construction industry, safety cli- climate: management, safety system, risk, work pressure,
mate is often described as the organizational members’ and competence. Glendon and Litherland [18] examined
perceptions of the value placed on safety by management the safety climate in a road construction organization and
[5] and is regarded as a manifestation of safety culture in found six factors: communication and support, adequacy of
the behavior and expressed attitude of employees [6]. Safety procedures, work pressure, personal protective equipment,
climate comes from a bottom-up perceptional approach, relationships, and safety rules. Similarly, two other related
concerned with worker perceptions of safety in the workplace studies [8] identified 10 similar items of safety climate on
[7]. Fang et al. [8] provide that the safety climate is a per- construction sites. These cover the broad areas of organi-
ception of the state of safety at a particular time and closely zational context, social environment, individual apprecia-
concerned with intangible issues such as environmental and tion, and work environment.
situational factors. Furthermore, the safety climate is a reliable According to the reviews of previous studies and the
indicator among a variety of quantitative and qualitative data actual situation, this paper takes the definition that safety
collection tools to measure the safety culture [9] and is climate refers only to the workers’ perception on the value of
concerned with the shared perceptions and beliefs that safety in the work environment, which is at the level of
workers hold regarding safety in their workplace [10], in- organization. The safety climate in this paper is mainly
cluding both physical and psychosocial safety climate [11, 12]. divided into three dimensions, including managers’ atten-
The safety climate has different ways of division on its tion, project safety environment, and safety supervision with
dimensions according to the previous studies. Bosak et al. seven items.
[13] put forward that safety climate has three dimensions,
that is, management commitment to safety, priority of
safety, and pressure for production, while Li et al. [14] 2.2. Research Hypotheses. The organizational safety climate
believe that safety climate has six dimensions, that is, defines the perception of the value of safety in the work
workers’ self-perception of safety, workers’ involvement in environment, which in turn affects individual behavior. In
safety, co-workers’ interaction, safety environment, safety order to address the effect that the safety climate at the
management involvement, and safety personnel support. organizational level has on the individual awareness and
Other research identifies five critical dimensions of safety behavior, and the relationship between them, the following
climate, which are management’s commitment, safety be- hypotheses are developed.
havior and employee involvement, incentives and rewards Safety awareness refers to an “individual’s own aware-
systems, communication and information systems, and ness of safety issues” [19]. This awareness works on both
work pressure [15]. a cognitive and behavioral level. Cognitively, safety aware-
The measurement items for safety climate varied in ness means being mentally aware of safety in one’s work
previous studies. As such, there is no consensus about the and recognizing what behaviors foster operational safety.
Advances in Civil Engineering 3
Behaviorally, safety awareness encourages the behavior that depends on whether there exists a positive safety climate
fosters operational safety. Therefore, safety behavior is the within the construction company [33]. The safety climate
employee’s immediate emotional response of the awareness. (which includes the physical working environment and
The present study has examined the relationship between social influence) is one of the most significant factors af-
safe behavior and safety awareness. Choi et al. [3] believe fecting safety awareness [18]. A study of safety climate in
that increased self-awareness could improve construction Serbian industrial workplace presented that safety climate
workers’ safety behavior. The analysis results of the inves- involves safety awareness and competency [34]. This
tigation by Sun et al. [20] indicate that safety awareness has therefore leads to Hypothesis 3.
direct and positive influence on the safety behavior. The
influence of awareness on behavior is mainly based on “the
attitude-behavior theory,” and Mills [21] pointed out that 2.2.3. Hypothesis 3. Safety climate has a significant positive
what really impacts the behavior of the individual is not effect on safety awareness.
the objective-specific conditions or events, but the way in
which information is being interpreted and processed by (1) The Moderating Effect of Safety Climate on Safety
the individual. Specifically, it could be concluded that one’s Awareness and Safety Behavior. Workers’ safety behavior is
attitude will affect one’s behaviors; that is, the safety influenced by perceived management norm, perceived
awareness could affect the safety behavior. This leads to workgroup norm, and personal attitude [3]. Under a positive
Hypothesis 1. climate of safety, the employees develop site safety awareness
and accept that the first priority during any site operation is
safety. Thus, they will take the initiative to adopt practices
2.2.1. Hypothesis 1. Safety awareness has a significant that will inevitably reduce the violation of safety rules [33].
positive effect on safety behavior. Safety climate could affect the safety behavior positively
through the working environment and safety awareness
(1) The Safety Climate and Safety Behavior. Previous research [20]. In other words, safety climate has a moderating effect
revealed a positive association between safety climate and on the relationship between safety awareness and safety
seafarers’ safety behavior [22–24]. Some research proved behavior, that is, when the safety climate in an organization
that safety climate is positively and significantly associated is higher, the safety awareness has a more significant positive
with safety behaviors [25–27]. Seo et al. [28] pointed that effect on safety behavior. So this leads to Hypothesis 4.
safety climate had a significant direct effect on safety behavior.
Bronkhorst [11] takes the same opinion that strengthening the
safety climate within an organization can increase employees’ 2.2.4. Hypothesis 4. Safety climate has a positive moderating
safety behavior. Fang et al. [8] point out that safety climate can effect on the relationship between individual safety aware-
play an important part in increasing safety behavior. Indi- ness and safety behavior, such that the relationship between
vidual perceptions of safety climate exerted a causal effect on safety awareness and safety behavior will be stronger when
individual safety behavior [29], and safety climate was the safety climate is positive.
assessed as relating to individual workers’ reported safety Finally, it creates a hierarchical-layer linear model that
behavior [30]. Kapp [31] pointed out that under positive includes safety climate, safety awareness, and safety be-
group safety climate conditions, employee safety compliance havior. The individual level includes construction worker
behavior improves. Other research held the opinion that the safety awareness and safety behavior as two variables. The
organizational safety climate can act as an indirect predictor organizational level includes the safety climate variable.
of proactive and compliance safety behaviors [32]. There is The research model is shown in Figure 2 and provides an
relatively little existing research, however, into the mecha- overview of these hypotheses.
nisms by which safety climate affects safety behavior. This
leads to Hypothesis 2.
2.3. Questionnaire. The survey instructions for the ques-
tionnaire were designed to ensure all employees, re-
2.2.2. Hypothesis 2. Safety climate has a significant positive gardless of education level, understood the questions. It
effect on safety behavior. comprised four parts: personal information, safety cli-
mate, safety awareness, and safety behavior. The scales are
(1) The Safety Climate and Safety Awareness. In the literature constructed using a Likert five-point scaling technique
of psychology, however, the empirical research that ex- with the survey respondents selecting a number from 1
amined safety awareness is not sufficient. Safety climate to 5 as appropriate. The 1–5 scale represents “strongly
concerns worker perception of safety as related to the disagree, little disagree, agree, little agree, and strongly
organizational environment, whereas safety awareness agree,” respectively.
concerns worker perception of safety as related to indi- Brondino et al. [35] developed Co-workers’ Safety Cli-
vidual. Safety climate exists at a higher level and has an mate (CSC) scale to measure safety climate. The question-
impact on safety awareness. In some research, the safety naire developed by Sun et al. [20] is based on the safety
awareness is included in the safety climate as one di- climate survey questionnaire of Health and Safety Climate
mension named the workers’ self-perception of safety [14]. Survey Tool of HSE, United Kingdom. Mearns et al. [7] used
The promotion of employees’ safety awareness primarily the Offshore Safety Questionnaire (OSQ) to conduct the
4 Advances in Civil Engineering
Hypothesis 3
Hypothesis 2
Hypothesis 4
Hypothesis 1
Figure 2: Research model and hypotheses.
Table 1: The scores of safety climate, safety awareness, and safety Table 2: Null model.
behavior.
Standard Variance
Random effect d.f. χ2 P value
N Min Max Average Standard deviation deviation component
Safety climate 96 16 22 19.94 1.86 INTRCPT1, u0 2.06982 4.28415 14 213.98111 <0.001
Safety awareness 96 24 33 28.82 2.83 Level 1, r 1.38250 1.91132
Safety behavior 96 5 13 8.55 2.44
3.2.1. Null Model. This research firstly established a null (2) Testing of Hypothesis 2. In order to test Hypothesis 2,
model to run the variance component analysis mainly introduce the variable of safety climate (SCj ) into Level 2
used to observe dependent variables in construction at and then build the model.
6 Advances in Civil Engineering
Level 1: SBij � β0j + β1j SAij + rij , awareness. The t-test results reach a statistically significant
level, so Hypothesis 3 is supported.
Level 2: β0j � c00 + c01 SCj + U0j , (3)
(4) Testing of Hypothesis 4. Model building for Hypothesis 4.
β1j � c10 + U1j ,
Level 1: SBij � β0j + β1j SAij + rij ,
where SC � safety climate, c00 � intercept of Level 2 re-
gression predicting β0j , c01 � slope of Level 2 regression Level 2: β0j � c00 + c01 SCj + U0j , (5)
predicting β0j (Hypothesis 2), c10 � intercept of Level 2 β1j � c10 + c11 SCj + U1j ,
regression predicting β1j , variance (rij ) � variance in Level 1
residual, variance (U0j ) � variance in Level 2 residual for where c00 � intercept of Level 2 regression predicting
models predicting β0j , and variance (U1j ) � variance in Level β0j , c01 � slope of Level 2 regression predicting β0j , c10 �
2 residual for models predicting β1j ; intercept of Level 2 regression predicting β1j , c11 � slope
In the above model, the relationship between safety of Level 2 regression predicting β1j (Hypothesis 4), variance
climate and safety behavior across construction teams (U0j ) � variance in Level 2 residual for models predicting
by controlling safety awareness in Level 1 is represented. β0j , and variance (U1j ) � variance in Level 2 residual for
A t-test on c01 is used to test hypothesis 2. The analysis models predicting β1j .
results are as follows: c10 � 0.67, P < 0.1. This shows that In the above model, c11 represents the estimate of in-
the safety climate for construction workers has a signif- teraction between safety climate and safety awareness, and
icant positive influence on safety behavior. The t-test the t-test on c11 can be used to test hypothesis 4. Analysis
results reach a statistically significant level, so Hypoth- results are as follows: c11 � 0.15, P < 0.1. This shows that
esis 2 is supported. safety climate positively adjusts the influence of the safety
awareness of safety behavior. Furthermore, t-test results
(3) Testing of Hypothesis 3. Model building for Hypothesis 3. reach a statistically significant level, so Hypothesis 4 is
supported.
Level 1: SAij � β0j + rij ,
(4)
Level 2: β0j � c00 + c01 SCj + U0j , 3.2.3. HLM Test on Hypotheses. The parameters of each
model are shown in Table 3; based on the analyses above, it
where c00 � intercept of Level 2 regression predicting β0j , can be conclude that the four hypotheses are all supported.
c01 � slope of Level 2 regression predicting β0j (Hy-
pothesis 3), variance (rij ) � variance in Level 1 residual, 4. Discussion and Conclusion
and variance (U0j ) � variance in Level 2 residual for
models predicting β0j . From the analysis of hypotheses above, it is obvious that the
In the above model, the t-test can be used to test safety climate of construction workers has a significant
Hypothesis 3. Analysis results are as follows: c10 � 0.63, positive influence on safety behavior as influence coefficient
P < 0.1. This shows that the safety climate for construc- is 0.67. And the safety climate also has a positive influence on
tion workers has a significant positive influence on safety safety awareness as influence coefficient is 0.63. It can be
Advances in Civil Engineering 7
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Copyright © 2018 Mudan Wang et al. This is an open access article
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