ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1660513
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Health and Safety for Productivity in the Construction SectorView all 12 articles
Supervisory and Coworker Safety Communication Impact Construction Workers' Behavior: A COR Theory Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China
- 2RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
- 3Anhui Jianzhu University, Hefei, China
- 4Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China
- 5Umea Universitet, Umeå, Sweden
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
On high-risk construction sites, frontline workers are constantly exposed to dual channels of safety communication: supervisory safety communication (SSC) and coworker safety communication (CSC). While existing research has emphasized the general importance of safety communication in promoting safety performance, the differentiated effects and psychological mechanisms of SSC and CSC remain underexplored. To address this gap, this study aims to adopt a Conservation of Resources (COR) theory framework to examine how SSC and CSC influence construction workers' safety behavior (SB) through psychological mechanisms, and how these effects vary under different levels of work pressure (WP). A survey was conducted with 359 frontline construction workers in large-scale projects across China, and data were analyzed by multiple linear regression and an interaction analysis with simple slopes. Results show that SSC (β = 0.234, p < 0.001) and CSC (β = 0.545, p < 0.001) both positively affect SB. Mediation analysis confirmed the roles of SKSE, SM, and POS, with SM showing the strongest effect (β = 0.235, p < 0.001). WP was found to weaken SSC's effects but not CSC's. These findings advance COR theory by clarifying psychological resource pathways in safety communication. Practically, the study suggests differentiated strategies for leveraging supervisory and coworker communication to enhance safety under varying work pressures.
Keywords: Supervisory safety communication, Coworker safety communication, safety behavior, Safety knowledge self-efficacy, Safety motivation, Psychological ownership for safety, Construction workers
Received: 08 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lyu, Xi, Zhang, Jiang, Zhang and Cui. 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: Peng Cui, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.