Examining the Relationship between Mindfulness, Personality, and National Culture for Construction Safety

Abstract

The construction industry still leads the world as one of the sectors with the most work-related injuries and worker fatalities. Considering that one of the barriers to improving construction safety is its stressful working environment, which increases risk of inattentiveness among construction workers, safety managers seek practices to measure and enhance worker focus and reduce stress, such as mindfulness. Considering the important role of mindfulness in curbing frequency and severity of incidents, researchers are interested in understanding the relationship between mindfulness and other common, more static human characteristics. As a result, this study examines the relationship between mindfulness and such variables as personality and national culture in the context of construction safety. Collecting data from 155 participants, this study used elastic net regression to examine the influence of independent (i.e., personality and national culture) variables on the dependent (i.e., mindfulness) variable. To validate the results of the regression, 10-fold cross-validation was conducted. The results reveal that certain personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness) and national cultural dimensions (e.g., uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and collectivism) can be used as predictors of mindfulness for individuals. Since mindfulness has shown to increase safety and work performance, safety managers can utilize these variables to identify at-risk workers so that additional safety training can be provided to enhance work performance and improve safety outcomes. The results of this study will inform future work into translating personal and mindfulness characteristics into factors that predict specific elements of unsafe human behaviors.