Research On Influence Of Construction Foreman’s Verbal Communication On Worker’s Unsafe Behaviors

The efficient measure to improve construction safety performance is to eliminate worker’s unsafe behaviors, which are the major direct cause of accident. Unsafe behaviors are primarily caused by cognitive failure, and mostly happens because workers fail to make the right choice. Among all the five cognitive stages, the decision stage has the most complex influence mechanism. The foreman can reduce worker’s probability of cognitive failure and unsafe behaviors through the way of verbal communication, but as the mechanism of how verbal communication influence behavior is remain unknown, there is still lack of efficient communication management strategies. Therefore, this study firstly summarized the influential cognitive factors through literature review; then analyze the mechanism of foreman’s verbal communication on worker’s cognitive factors and the cognitive factors on their behaviors. The method of structural equation modeling(SEM) was adopted to test the data collected through field survey; lastly, based on the results, the suggestions to improve foreman-worker safety communication were proposed. The research work included two parts: 1) identified that both communication content(involve or not involve safety) and communication style(coaching/experience-sharing/abusive) may have impact on worker’s cognitive factors, but the weight of influence on one individual is unknown; 2) pointed out the controversy of the interactions between cognitive factors and established two competing models of behavior mechanism. In order to test the research hypothesis, data of three typical unsafe behaviors of steel workers and elevator workers was collected by experience sampling method, unstructured interviews, filling type questionnaire, and analyzed by method of variable correlation and SEM. The results showed that foreman’s communication content has no significant impact on worker’s cognition, but communication style has, and the coaching style can improve worker’s subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. Moreover, the point was verified that subjective norm has greatest influence on behavior, playing a leading role in the three cognitive factors, and has the greatest effect on behavior modification through perceived behavioral control. Combined with the actual situation of foremen’s verbal communication and workers’ cognition on construction sites, suggestions were proposed. To achieve the goal of improving workers’ cognitive level and reducing unsafe behaviors, the foremen should possess comprehensive safety knowledge and skills to hold the right attitude toward construction behaviors, and possess good verbal communication skills to express coaching style during communication with workers and give verbal feedback to workers timely. This study explored how foreman’s verbal communication influence worker’s behaviors based on cognitive perspective, not only provide scientific basis for research on unsafe behavior caused by decision failure, but also propose practical suggestions for development of communication management strategies, which can help to reasonably allocate the management resources and improve safety performance effectively. Based on this study, the verbal communication can be developed to a new, effective construction safety management measure.