Fostering resilient safety culture to boost safety performance of young construction workers: Insights from empirical and simulation studies

Abstract

Frequent occupational accidents in the construction industry highlight the significance of improving workers' safety performance (SP), particularly among young workers (YWs, i.e., Millennials and Generation Z), who suffer more occupational injuries. Drawing on the social learning theory and job demands-resources theory, this study attempts to uncover how the resilient safety culture (RSC) of construction organizations boosts the SP of YWs. A mixed research design, combining the “top-down” empirical study and the “bottom-up” agent-based modeling (ABM) simulation experiment was developed in this study. First, a moderated mediation model was developed wherein job crafting served as a mediator, while supervisor support and coworker support were considered as boundary conditions. Using 218 samples of YWs from construction projects in China, the proposed theoretical model was validated by the structural equation modeling approach. Based on the empirical results, an ABM experiment was subsequently conducted to dynamically exhibit the SP emergent process of YWs. The empirical results affirmed that RSC significantly enhanced the SP of YWs, and job crafting was a mediator between this link. Supervisor support was found to amplify the positive impact of RSC on YWs’ job crafting and further enhance their SP, while coworker support played the opposite moderating role. In addition, the results of ABM experiment further reinforced the cross-section findings of the empirical study with a dynamic picture. This study advances the RSC research in the broad industrial and occupational ergonomics field by emphasizing its potential as an effective approach to enhancing productivity, health, and safety in construction workplaces. Additionally, it offers valuable practical insights on how to leverage RSC to improve the SP of YWs, thus effectively reducing human factor-related accidents.