A Simulation Study on the Processes of Intra-Group Informal Interaction Affecting Workers’ Safety Behaviors

The construction industry across the world is characterized by a high safety risk, and the occurrence of these safety accidents has led to substantial economic and social losses. The workers’ unsafe behaviors are considered to be a main cause. Thus, recently, scholars in the construction industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of the influencing factors (or antecedents) and their impact on workers’ safety behaviors (WSBs), hoping to provide insight into useful management policies. The existing literature has identified many society-level, cooperation-level, project-level, and individual-level concepts influencing WSB, but ignores the influence of intra-group informal interaction (IGII) on WSB. This study constructed a conceptual model for IGII, group knowledge sharing (GKS), and group identification (GI) to determine their influence on construction workers’ safety behaviors, and then conducted simulation analysis using the software of NetLogo. The results show that IGII, GKS, and GI can positively influence workers’ safety behaviors, and IGII can also positively influence WSB through GKS and GI. This study enriches the theoretical knowledge on the causation of construction workers’ safety behaviors, provides references for project managers to carry out proper safety management, and offers a theoretic foundation for the formulation of industry regulations.