A Study of the Relationship Between Psychological Capital and Unsafe Behavior of Construction Workers

Many studies show that individual unsafe behavior is the leading cause of construction safety accidents, of which 94% of accident-induced causes are related to unsafe human psychology. Psychological capital, as a unique psychological resource of individuals, plays an important role in motivating individuals to implement safe behaviors. Therefore, it is essential to explore the influence of construction workers’ psychological capital on unsafe behaviors, which helps to control their unsafe behaviors and provides strong guidance for construction enterprises. In addition, the psychological capital of construction workers is one of the important endogenous factors affecting unsafe behavior. This research explores the relationship between construction workers’ psychological capital and unsafe behaviors. It carried out surveys of construction workers in Shanghai by questionnaires. The psychological capital, safety attitudes, and unsafe behaviors of construction workers were used respectively as exogenous, meditating, and endogenous variables to construct the structural equation model. The following conclusions were obtained: first, the three dimensions of self-efficacy, hope, and resilience significantly affect unsafe behavior, and the relationship between optimism and unsafe behavior is not significant; second, self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience have significant effects on safety attitudes; third, self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience indirectly affect construction workers’ safety attitudes by influencing construction workers’ unsafe behaviors; finally, we propose management countermeasures to improve the workers’ psychological capital and safety attitude based on the research results.