Workers' perceptions of safety climate in international construction projects: Effects of nationality, religious belief, and employment mode

Safety management has emerged as an important topic in the construction industry. The safety climate serves as an outline of the basic safety culture's features and forewarns on safety-related problems. This study aims to investigate safety climate information in international construction projects, and find out specific factors affecting perceptions of safety climate in an international context. A questionnaire survey was administered on five construction sites contracted by Chinese international contractors. A total of 571 valid questionnaires were collected from this survey. Hierarchical logistic regression analysis reveals that nationality, religious beliefs, and employment mode can significantly affect perceptions of safety climate from different facets. In the present case, Chinese workers tend to have more positive perceptions of safety climate than their Vietnamese coworkers. Workers with religious beliefs tend to have more positive perceptions of safety climate than those without such beliefs. Finally, workers employed by subcontractors tend to have more positive perceptions of the safety climate than those employed directly by the main contractor. The findings identify the crucial factors affecting safety climate, which in turn enable practitioners to create a positive safety culture to enhance safety performance in international construction projects.