The Role of Risk Tolerance in Peer-Influenced Risk-Taking Behaviors on Construction Sites

The inherently social environment of construction job sites can exacerbate high incident rates due to social influence and peer pressure. Workers’ risk perception (RP) and risk tolerance (RT) have been identified as key factors contributing to their involvement in high-risk behaviors. However, there is a paucity of research on how workers’ RT, as a personality trait, impacts and moderates the relationship between RP and risk-taking behaviors in the presence of a risky peer. To fill this gap, this study empirically examined the changes in workers’ stress levels, due to the perceived risk, and risk-taking behaviours given their RT in the presence of an unsafe peer. An augmented virtuality (AV) environment simulating a roofing task was developed to capture participants’ real-time physiological and risk-taking measures while performing the task alongside the unsafe peer. The findings showed that RT moderates the relationship between participants’ risk perception and risk-taking behaviors in a social setting. Specifically, participants with higher risk tolerance were less resistance to the imposed peer pressure and showed higher risk-taking behaviors in the presence of the unsafe peer due to their misperception of risks. Given the challenge of altering individuals’ personality traits, this study underscores the importance of providing workers with higher risk tolerance with effective interventions to improve their risk perception, counteract excessive risk-taking, and mitigate the adverse effects of peer pressure within construction job sites.