Beyond Compliance in Tourism: Fostering Proactive Safety Culture in Multi-Crisis Hospitality

The current study explores the effect of safety leadership on employees’ safety performance within a multianxious hospitality industry, with belief restoration as mediation and perceived susceptibility as moderation. The tourism and hospitality sector is especially vulnerable to climate-related disruption, including heavy rainfall, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the collapse of infrastructure, resulting in increased occupational safety-related uncertainty for frontline workers. In such cases, successful safety performance depends on regulatory compliance and leadership, as well as psychological safety. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 106 frontline employees across five hotels in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a tourism destination exposed to recurring environmental hazards. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Results indicate that safety leadership does not exhibit a significant direct association with employee safety behavior. Instead, leadership operates indirectly through belief restoration, supporting a full mediation pattern at the structural level. Perceived susceptibility strengthens the relationship between safety leadership and belief restoration and shows a marginal interaction effect on safety behavior. Theoretically, the study refines safety leadership research by modelling belief restoration as a domain-specific cognitive recovery pathway linking leadership cues to safety engagement under prolonged disruption. The findings suggest that in multi-crisis hospitality environments, leadership influence may depend less on direct compliance mechanisms and more on employees’ renewed confidence in the organization’s ability to manage safety threats.