Safety Motivation Internalization

In recent years,safety motivation has been regarded as a mediator in the relationship between safety climate and safety performance.However,few studies have looked into how different types of motivation affect safety performance.Self-Determined Theory(SDT)is adopted in the present study to investigate how safety climate affects different types of motivation,namely external,introjected,identified,and intrinsic motivation,and subsequently leads to different safety performances.With the understanding of motivations,this study also contributes in exploring the internalization process of external safety behaviour to intrinsic safety value,and subsequently results in sustainable safety behaviour.The internalization process is studied at different hierarchical level of project team in order to get precise analysis and implication.The surveys have been undertaken in both Chinese and Malaysian construction industry with a total of 220 employees from China railway project sites and Shanghai Disneyland project site,and a total of 170 employees from Sunway Construction Corporation and members of Master Builders Association of Malaysia,participated in the present research.Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA)and Structural Equation Modeling(SEM)techniques were used to conduct Path Analysis for data analysis.The results verify that each safety climate factor has different effects on different levels of safety motivation and resulted in different safety performances,accordingly at different level of hierarchy structure.In overall,external motivation shows adverse result in safety performance.Introjected motivation indicated positive effect on safety compliance,however identified and intrinsic motivation could extend its impact onto safety participation.The finding shows that safety competence only has fundamental effect on safety compliance.Both Chinese and Malaysian top management(project owners & contractors)shared similarity in the significant effect of safety commitment and safety management system on safety participation.On the other hand,safety communication and supportive environment are found significant for supervisors and workers on safety participation.Supervisors present significant effect of introjected motivation on safety participation,which explains their obligation in ensuring workers' safety.However,both Chinese and Malaysian workers are intrinsically motivated differently.Chinese workers are found intrinsically motivated by supportive environment and Malaysian workers are found intrinsically motivated by safety involvement.Discussion and implications are deliberated to improve safety culture and motivation,which results in better safety performance in return.