Investigating the impact of hazard perception failure on construction workers' unsafe behavior: An eye-tracking and thinking-aloud approach

Understanding the antecedents of construction workers' unsafe behavior is significant for developing effective interventions. Many studies have suggested that hazard perception failure influences workers' unsafe behavior. However, the relationship between hazard perception failure and workers' unsafe behavior remains anecdotal and has yet to be empirically examined. Furthermore, the mechanism of hazard perception failure affecting workers' unsafe behavior is also unclear. To fill these gaps, this study breaks down hazard perception failure into attention failure, hazard recognition failure, and risk perception failure, and examines how these three types of hazard perception failure interact to influence workers' unsafe behavior. Laboratory experiments combining eye-tracking and thinking-aloud were conducted to collect data. And then, regression analysis was employed to test the research hypotheses. The results demonstrated that: (1) attention failure (β = 0.292), hazard recognition failure (β = 0.818), and risk perception failure (β = 0.388) have a significant positive effect on workers' unsafe behavior; (2) attention failure has a significant positive effect on hazard recognition failure (β = 0.321) and risk perception failure (β = 0.109), and hazard recognition failure has a significant positive effect on risk perception failure (β = 0.392); and (3) attention failure has an indirect effect on workers' unsafe behavior through hazard recognition failure (0.260) and risk perception failure (0.040). The primary contributions of this study include: (1) providing empirical evidence to support the relationship between hazard perception failure and workers' unsafe behavior by validating the significant positive effects of the three types of hazard perception failure on workers' unsafe behavior; and (2) providing insights into the mechanism of hazard perception failure affecting workers' unsafe behavior by revealing how the three types of hazard perception failure interact to influence workers' unsafe behavior.