Abstract

The falling or tumbling accident is the most serious type of accident in the construction industry. Past studies mainly focused on researches on the testing and refinement of fall protection equipment, but most falling accidents are related to unsafe behaviors of workers. Because of improper or insufficient safety knowledge or understanding of working at high places, construction workers are particularly susceptible to the risk of falling. Consequently, the study and analysis of unsafe behaviors and understanding are essential to the fall prevention of construction workers, which is the main purpose of this study.

The main conclusions from this study are as follows: (1) from the analysis of major occupational accidents, falling death of temporary workers is the most significant, when the locations of such occurrences are near the edge of an opening, the roof, and the scaffold. The most common unsafe behavior is improper action, followed by improper use of personal protective equipment; (2) through actual observations, unsafe behaviors such as having unsafe postures during work, improper sitting/standing near the open edge, and improper climbing are the most common; (3) analyzing the results of the questionnaires, factors affecting labor safety behavior and knowledge include personal factors, education and training, and are also related to the safety requests of the site supervisor, the pressure at work, and the pricing of the project contract; (4) workers generally think that improving the physical and mental needs of their work, such as providing operational efficiency, care and concern, and a friendly working environment, are helpful in strengthening labor safety behaviors and understanding; (5) in addition to strengthening labor safety protection; education, training, hazard notification, inspections, and providing workers with more respect, trust, and honor, will encourage safe behaviors and internalize safety knowledge into safety habits. These are the future directions to work on to improve the safety behaviors of first-line workers operating at high places.

In addition to analyzing safety behaviors and recognition of workers in the construction industry working at high places, this study also proposes management practices and behavioral incentives for improving labor safety behaviors. The practical manual of improving safety cognition of labor working at high places is also compiled and proposed as a reference for the safety management and the improvement of the safety awareness in the construction industry in order to reduce the occupational accidents.

Keywords: Construction industry, Behavior-based safety, Falling accidents, Safety recognition and knowledge