Socio-demographic and economic determinants of workplace violence: insights from World Risk Poll, 2021, with 125,911 respondents from 121 countries

Purpose This study aims to examine the socio-demographic and economic determinants of three types of workplace violence: physical violence, psychological violence and sexual violence. It also explored probabilities of burden of multiple workplace violence. Design/methodology/approach The authors used data from World Risk Poll comprising 125,911 respondents from 121 countries. The authors applied mixed-effect regression models, due to hierarchical nature of data, to examine the socio-demographic and economic determinants of three types of workplace violence: physical, psychological and sexual. Findings Out of 125,911 respondents, 33,693 experienced one or more types of workplace violence, 9,817 experienced double burden of violence and 1,321 responded having experienced all three types of workplace violence. Females have lesser odds than males of experiencing physical violence and more than double the odds of experiencing sexual violence. The odds of experiencing sexual violence generally decrease with age. Education provides buffer against physical violence but increases the odds of experiencing psychological and sexual violence, probably due to greater reporting and awareness about rights. Importantly, being a female and greater education increase one’s likelihood of experiencing multiple types of violence. Higher wealth quintile of respondents seems to provide buffer against sexual and psychological violence. Originality/value This is one of the pioneer studies that examine the socio-demographic and economic determinants of workplace violence using an exhaustive sample from the World Risk Poll, 2021.