Effects of Individual Risk Attitude, Safety Climate, and Affective Commitment on Safety Compliance

Abstract

Although construction is one of the most dangerous sectors and even though small firms account for roughly 90% of all firms in the EU, there is little evidence about the role of safety climate as a determinant of safety performance both in the sector and in small firms. Moreover, risk attitude is surprisingly understudied as a determinant of safety performance. There have been few studies of individual risk attitude and safety performance, of which none has used validated or behavioral measures of risk attitude. This study tackles both these issues by collecting data on safety climate—using Zohar & Luria’s (2005) safety climate questionnaire—and individual risk attitude—using Lejuez et al.’s (2002) Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART)—in a sample of small firms in the construction sector. The results obtained confirm the leading role of safety climate in explaining safety performance in small construction firms and reject the hypothesis that behaviorally measured risk attitude has an incremental explanatory power concerning safety performance.