ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1643332
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Health and Safety for Productivity in the Construction SectorView all 14 articles
Coping behaviour of occupational health risk for construction workers—determinants identification using the COM-B model and a data mining analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1China Academy of Safety Sciences and Technology, Beijing, China
- 2China University of Mining and Technology - Beijing, Beijing, China
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Background. China hosts the largest construction workforce yet faces severe occupational-health challenges. Coping behaviours (CBOHR) are key to mitigating these hazards but remain understudied.. A cross-sectional survey of 484 construction workers assessed Capability, Opportunity, Motivation and Behaviour via the COM-B model. Structural equation modelling tested mediation pathways; association-rule mining identified high-and low-level CBOHR determinants. Results. The results showed that the three modules of Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation, which contained 15 behaviour change domains, and module of Behaviour, which contained 8 specific CBOHRs, comprised a COM-B model framework with satisfactory fit, reliability and validity. Bootstrapping confirmed Motivation fully mediates Capability → Behaviour and partially mediates Opportunity → Behaviour, while association rules pinpoint the key domains linked to high and low CBOHR levels.Strong correlated item sets were selected by the association rule analysis results, which captured domains of strong correlation with high (and low) level of each CBOHR,.This is the initial study to fuse COM-B with data mining in occupational health, pinpointing " motivationvaluespolicy " as actionable levers for CBOHR interventions and providing preliminary evidence for scalable worker-health programmes.
Keywords: behavior change technique, COM-B model, Association rule analysis, coping behavior, Occupational health risk, Construction worker
Received: 08 Jun 2025; Accepted: 01 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Ling, Wang, Li and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xuesong Yang, China Academy of Safety Sciences and Technology, Beijing, China
Mingrong Zeng, China Academy of Safety Sciences and Technology, Beijing, China
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