The Effect of Safety Attitudes on Coal Miners’ Human Errors: A Moderated Mediation Model

Lixia Niu and Rui Zhao ()
Additional contact information
Lixia Niu: School of Business and Management, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao 125100, China
Rui Zhao: School of Business and Management, Liaoning Technical University, Huludao 125100, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 16, 1-14

Abstract: With the advancement of digital technology, the operation scenarios and work of miners have changed. Although the rate of accidents caused by unsafe conditions is decreasing year by year, the rate of accidents caused by human errors is still high. To investigate the influencing factors of miners’ human errors in the context of smart mines, based on the attitude–behavior model, this paper introduced two variables, situational awareness and task complexity, and established a moderated mediation model to explore the path of safety attitudes on human errors. Using time-lagged data from 246 full-time miners working at smart mines, we found that miners’ safety attitudes were effective in reducing human errors, miners’ safety attitudes reduced human errors through the mediation of situational awareness, and task complexity enhanced the positive relationship between safety attitudes and situational awareness, thus positively moderating the indirect relationship between safety attitudes and human errors. The findings advance a new understanding of how safety attitudes can reduce miners’ human errors. They also provide practical implications on the importance of leadership and finding ways to promote situational awareness as well as maintaining good safety attitudes.

Keywords: safety attitudes; human errors; situational awareness; task complexity; path analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/16/9917/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/16/9917/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:16:p:9917-:d:885434

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().