Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of Construction Management
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
The construction industry has a reputation for being stressful and hazardous in nature, requiring protective and preventive measures to mitigate accidents and minimize fatalities. Even after implementing safety interventions and protocols, construction workers’ occupational health and safety challenges manifest the need to identify limitations to make future preventive practices worthy of considering effective safety interventions. While hazard recognition has been recognized as a critical component of preventive measures to improve the safety climate for workers, research gaps persist regarding the efficacy of utilizing near-miss recognition as an efficient tool to evaluate workers' safety behavior and vigilance. This research aimed to provide empirical evidence, theoretical value, and practical considerations through an eye-tracking study to assess psychological and physiological parameters' association with workers' near-miss recognition ability under different workplace stressor conditions. Thirty-five participants participated in an eye-tracking experiment conducted in a controlled environment where their recognition performance was evaluated using near-miss scenarios collected from construction sites. Specifically, the objective was to investigate the influence of the Big 5 personality traits on construction workers' near-miss recognition performance, evaluate the impact of workplace stressors (mental and auditory) on workers' recognition ability and safety behavior using psychophysiological parameters, and examine the effect of physical stress (physical exertion) on construction workers' near-miss detection proficiency.
The findings yielded unequivocal evidence of an association between personality traits and physiological parameters on workers' near-miss detection performance. There was a significant correlation between openness/intellect and workers' attentiveness indicators towards near-miss AOIs. Notably, individuals with higher scores in openness/intellect displayed enhanced attentiveness during the task. Moreover, the influence analysis demonstrated that workers with low conscientiousness and low openness/intellect exhibited a higher frequency and earlier attention to near-miss opportunities within the presented images. During near-miss identification, workplace stressors triggered by mental and auditory stress can adversely affect worker stress levels, safety behavior, and cognitive processing toward near-miss recognition. Visual attention towards near-miss scenarios was reduced by 26% for mental stress conditions and 46% for auditory stress conditions compared to baseline.
Additionally, physical stress manifested as overexertion triggered by manual material handling activity can adversely affect worker safety behavior and cognitive ability toward near-miss recognition. Visual attention toward near-miss scenarios was reduced by 39.43% post-exposure to physical exertion. Meanwhile, physiological data collected using wearable sensors statistically correlates significantly with participants' near-miss recognition. Individuals with low neuroticism and extraversion showed the highest reduction in recognition performance post-exposure to physical exertion.
Date
7-15-2024
Recommended Citation
Muley, Shashank, "AN INVESTIGATION OF CONSTRUCTION WORKERS' NEAR-MISS RECOGNITION PERFORMANCE USING PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL DATA" (2024). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 6547.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/6547
Committee Chair
Chao Wang