To Reveal the Critical Influencing Factors for Safety Behaviors of Chinese Construction Workers from Stress Management Perspective: A Machine-Learning Approach

It has widely recognized that safety behaviors of construction workers contributed to majority of construction accidents. Given its significance, lot of resources have been inputted to improve safety behaviors of construction workers. However, unsafe behavior seems inevitable. Construction workers are also under excessive occupational stress, because of performing various demanding and repetitive tasks while in shortage of necessary job resources. Previous studies have claimed the relationships between stress and safety for workers from other countries and districts, while there is lack of study for Chinese construction workers. To fill in this research gap, current study aims to apply both traditional statistical methods and machine learning approach to examine the complicated interactions between task stressors, stress and safety behavior for construction workers in Mainland China. After an extensive literature review of relevant knowledge, a conceptual model was proposed to indicate the hypothesized relationships between task stressors, stress and safety behavior for construction workers. A questionnaire survey was administered among around seventy construction workers to collect empirical data. A series of statistical analyses were conducted to confirm the theoretical classification of stressors, stress and safety for construction workers. Decision tree algorithm in supervised machine learning approach was applied to develop model for Stressors–Stress–Safety interactions for construction workers. The results of current study revealed that task stressors can affect the safety of Chinese construction workers, both directly and indirectly through the stressors–stress–safety path. Implications of the findings were discussed and practical recommendations for managing task stressors and stress were made. Current study contributed to reveal the significant effect of task stressors and stress on safety behaviors of Chinese construction workers. The results of current study also support that machine learning method is applicable for studying the health and safety issues of construction workers.