Risk perception, barriers and working safely at height in construction: a psychological network approach

In the construction industry workers frequently work at height. To explore and describe construction workers’ barriers and motives to work safely at height, we studied their perspectives on the safety risks, perceived barriers and intention to use safety measures regarding working at height. Specifically, we studied perspectives on the use of edge protection and a safety harness. We administered semi-structured interviews (n = 11) and a pen and paper survey (n = 227) on construction and training sites. Only operational workers were eligible to participate in the study. In this study, the behaviour of using specific safety measures was approached as being emergent from a complex network of interacting psychological variables. To analyse the structure of these ‘behavioural decision networks’ we applied a psychological network approach. Construction workers did not necessarily agree they were at risk from falling from height and were even less concerned about that. Network analysis suggest that cognitive evaluation (i.e. probability) had a more central position in the behavioural decision networks than affective appraisal (i.e. worry). The intention to use safety measures had the most central position in the network, while the general intention to work safely was the least central. Perceived control over encountering unsafe situations was the second lowest. Age and work experience hardly played a role in the networks. Descriptive comparisons of the networks suggest different possible points for intervention to improve safe working at height. We identified several factors that may be promising intervention points. For two safety measures, different intervention points will likely be more promising in fostering safer working at height. Interventions and communication efforts that focus on fostering specific behavioural intentions regarding the use of safety measures are likely to be far more effective in improving safe behaviour than relying on general slogans of working safely. Other possible leverage points include sharing personal stories from colleagues who have sustained (serious) injuries due to falls from height, improving hazard identification, and removing barriers to the use of safety measures. Future studies should elaborate on and further substantiate the explorative findings in this paper.