Zhang, Z; Guo, H; Li, H and Fang, Y (2025) Agent-based simulation approach to analyzing the impact of construction safety management behaviors on workers' safety behaviors. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 151(8): 04025106, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Workers' unsafe behaviors are consistently considered to be the primary cause of construction accidents. It is widely acknowledged that workers' cognitive processes, especially in the decision stage, dominate their behaviors, and management behaviors play a pivotal role in the mitigation of workers' safe behaviors. However, an effective quantitative method for the analysis of workers' decisions is lacking, thus hindering a clear understanding of the impact of management behaviors on workers' safe behaviors. This research introduces cumulative prospect theory, derived from behavioral economics, to quantitatively depict the characteristic tendency in workers' decision stage. Based on this, an agent-based model was established to simulate the impact of management behaviors on workers' safety behaviors, mainly including four components, namely the definition of agents, environment hazards, interaction rules, and unsafe behaviors. An experiment was conducted to validate the reliability of the simulation model. The results show that it is applicable to incorporate cumulative prospect theory into workers' decision stage during simulation, and the simulation model is effective for the analysis of management behaviors' impact on workers' safety behaviors. The results from the simulation model have the potential to improve the safety management practices of a specific construction project. Thus, this research contributes to the theory and practice of construction safety management.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | agent-based model; cognitive process; construction workers' safety behavior; cumulative prospect theory; safety management behavior |
| Index terms: | safety behaviour, construction worker, interaction, experiment, unsafe behaviour, construction safety, safety management, agent, prospect theory, construction project, quantitative method, construction accident, mitigation |
| Subjects: | environmental health, occupational health and safety management, data collection methods, data analysis and analytics, production management, financial risk, behavioral psychology, practitioner, economic analysis |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Project Management, Sustainability, Cost Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here