The influence of religiosity on safety behavior of workers: A Proposed Framework

Abstract

There has been a growing body of studies on religion and human safety behaviour in recent years. However, psychologists seem to be more inclined to pairing religiosity and non-occupational risky behaviour (such as smoking, substance abuse, drinking and driving) in their studies, while safety scientists have hardly explored the influence of religiosity on occupational safety behaviour such as taking shortcuts or breaking the rules. To close this gap, this paper suggests that empirical studies should be conducted to explore possible associations between religiosity and safety behaviour at the workplace. To facilitate such studies, a conceptual framework is proposed based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). This paper explains the rationale of choosing TPB. While TPB postulates that both the behavioural intention and perceived behavioural control explain the behaviour, it is interesting to examine the effect of religiosity on occupational behaviour. Examining religiosity as a new construct in occupational safety behaviour studies can help trigger the interest of other religious scholars, psychologists and safety scientists to use religiosity as a construct more rigorously in their future studies on safety to address the gap. Such studies can also help formulate or enhance safety interventions, since these human-related incidents and accidents seem endemic in high-risk industries.