Research On The Social Contagion Mechanism Of Safety Violations Within An Construction Crew

Currently,construction industry has made constantly increasing efforts including safety technologies,management practices,and academic studies,which have significantly promoted the working environment onsite.However,the improvement of safety performance in the construction industry seems much lower than that in general industries,which still witnesses high frequencies of accidents and fatalities,and causes serious direct and indirect economic losses and social impacts.Construction workers' safety violations have been widely regarded as the dominant causal factor for accidents.At present,how to prevent safety violations has been become a hot point in the field of construction safety research.Although previous studies have explored the causal factors for workers' engagement in safety violations,these studies could not explain why safety violation is a prevalent phenomenon within the construction crew.This research chose the social contagion nature of safety violations as the research perspective.Based on social contagion related theories,safety violations related theories and complex system theory,this research applied theoretical reasoning,empirical analyses and simulation modelling,to explore the underlying mechanisms of social contagion of safety violations within the construction crew in a systematic manner.This research could fill in the gap that studies on social contagion of safety violations within the crew are rare.It could promote the improvement of theories related to the social contagion of safety violations.The research findings will provide some practical insights for management's dealing with the social contagion problem of safety violations within the construction crew,and for promoting safety performance in the construction industry.This research proposed and tested the theoretical model regarding the social contagion effect of coworkers' safety violations on individuals within the construction crew.This research found that when perceiving more coworkers' safety violations,individuals were more likely to break safety rules.Coworkers' routine safety violations were more socially contagious than their situational safety violations.Coworkers' situational safety violations had an indirect effect on individuals' safety violations mainly through perceived social support and safety motivation.By contrast,coworkers' routine safety violations had an indirect effect on individuals' safety violations mainly through perceived production pressure and attitudinal ambivalence.The findings could fill in the gap that research on lateral coworkers' social influence is rare in current safety-related research.This research further proposed and tested the theoretical model regarding the social contagion effect of supervisors' safety violations on individuals within the construction crew.It found that when perceiving more supervisors' safety violations,individuals were more likely to break safety rules.Supervisors' situational safety violations had indirect effects on individuals mainly through leader-member exchange and group safety norm.By contrast,supervisors' routine safety violations had indirect effects on individuals mainly through management safety commitment and enforcement of safety rules and procedures.These findings will fill in the gap that the current safety-related research has paid little attention to supervisors' negative social influence.This research proposed and tested the combined social contagion model of safety violations within the construction crew.It found that compared with coworkers' situational safety violations,individuals tend to regard supervisors' situational safety violations as the role models.Supervisors tend to exert direct effects on individuals through the social learning,while coworkers tent to exert indirect effects on individuals through the variables from modified theory of planned behavior(i.e.,attitudinal ambivalence towards safety compliance,group safety norm and perceived behavioral control).It also found that supervisors' safety violations had negative effects on the social contagion of coworkers' safety violations.These findings could provide evidences on how two social influence sources could guide individuals' decisions on safety violations simultaneously.Finally,this research built a hybrid SD-ABM simulation model,to understand the dynamic social contagion effect of safety violations within the construction crew.Our findings show that different interventions should be employed for different work environments(i.e.,low,modest and high hazard level).Specifically,social interactions play a critical role at the modest hazard level because workers in this situation may encounter more ambiguity or uncertainty.Interventions related to decreasing the contagion probability and the safety–productivity tradeoff should be given priority.For the low hazard situation,highly intensive management strategies are required before the occurrence of injuries or accidents.In contrast,for the high hazard situation,highly intensive proactive safety strategies should be supplemented by other interventions(e.g.,a high safety goal)to further control safety violations.