Improving safety compliance of construction workers: The role of safety communication, management commitment to safety, and perceived ease of use

Safety compliance is crucial in maintaining construction safety. This study applied the concept of differentiating safety compliance into deep safety compliance and surface safety compliance and set out to investigate the effects of perceived ease of use, management commitment to safety, and safety communication on deep and surface safety compliance, respectively. By using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), a model was developed and validated based on the cross-sectional survey data collected from 239 construction workers in Australia. Results revealed that safety communication could directly and positively impact deep safety compliance, while negatively impact surface safety compliance. Moreover, management commitment to safety was found to impact safety communication directly and positively, while perceived ease of use could moderate this relationship. Last but not least, safety communication played a mediating role in the relationship between management commitment to safety, and deep and surface safety compliance. By investigating the contributing factors of deep and surface safety compliance in the construction industry, this study contributes to the literature on safety management and provides practical implications as understanding the proposed model helps site managers or safety professionals enhance safety performance by achieving deep safety compliance or minimizing surface safety compliance.