Risk Perception and Risk Communication from a Systems Perspective: a Study on Safety Behavioural Intervention Frameworks and Functions

The constant developments in the industry influence organisational practices. The latter often require personnel to adapt their behaviours and comply with policies and rules to realise business objectives while ensuring safety. Although risk perception and risk communication are significant contributors to safe behaviours, there is a lack of a comprehensive approach to behavioural safety which encompasses those two essential aspects while accounting for interactions within systems. This research identified and assessed eleven behavioural intervention frameworks and eight intervention functions for inclusivity of risk perception and communication factors through a scoping review. The results, which were discussed against studies and practice in the aviation industry as a representative safety-critical and high-reliability sector, showed notable fluctuations of inclusivity parameters across intervention frameworks and functions. The combination of “enablement”, “education”, and “environmental restructuring” emerged as the most promising functions, and the “Recognition Primed Decision Making” framework was found as the most inclusive relatively to the rest intervention frameworks reviewed. Nonetheless, as even the functions and framework assessed as relatively more inclusive still miss several aspects of system agent interactions and risk perception and communication factors, considering all those parameters in future research is warranted.