The Mediating Role of Job Competence between Safety Participation and Behavioral Compliance

The effective improvement of employee behavioral compliance and safety performance is an important subject related to the sustainable development of the construction industry. Based on data from a Chinese company (n = 290), this study used a partial least squares-structural equation model to clarify the relationship among safety participation, job competence, and behavioral compliance. Empirical analysis found that: (1) safety participation had a significant positive impact on employees’ behavioral compliance; and (2) job competence played a partial mediating role between safety participation and behavioral compliance. By selecting two new perspectives of safety participation and job competence, this study derived new factors affecting behavioral compliance, constructed a new theory about safety management, and conducted an in-depth discussion on improving behavioral compliance theoretically. Practically, the research put forward a new decision-making model, deconstructed the mechanism between safety participation and behavioral compliance, and provided new guiding strategies for improving employee behavioral compliance.