An exploratory factor analysis approach to investigate health and safety factors in Indian construction sector

Construction sites require greater safety precautions due to unsafe working conditions. Health and Safety (H&S) in the Indian construction sector is very poor. Even with this reality, Indian researchers have paid little attention to H&S issues. Understanding important dimensions improves on-site H&S. So, this study aims to find out the most important aspects and factors that affect health and safety on the job site in the Indian construction industry and get other developing countries to do the same. A piloted and tested questionnaire survey approach was employed in this study to verify and confirm the set of dimensions explored from the existing literature. After compiling a final set of 61 dimensions, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to analyze them. Out of the original 61 dimensions, 35 were deemed significant and clustered into 4 main factors: management regulatory factor, worker's self-regulatory factor, workplace regulatory factor, and government regulatory factor. The study's findings may help decision-makers, top management, and workers to understand H&S and its effective implementation. The results will also encourage developing countries to implement H&S governance for on-site H&S. Future studies for the Indian construction sector can examine the factors using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and a model by structural equation modeling (SEM) or Path Model can be developed by using the dimensions and extracted factors given in this work. In the future, emerging nations should conduct more research in this direction is also recommended.