Influence of religiosity and fatalism on safety behaviors of Muslim shipyard workers in Malaysia

Abstract

Increasing accident rates in the construction industry in Malaysia is a concern. Although a plethora of factors are attributed to these accidents, unsafe behavior is one of the main causes of the accidents. The Theory of Planned Behavior assumes that beliefs could affect a person’s attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, religious and fatalistic beliefs could potentially shape a person’s safety behavior. Religiosity is the intensity of religious belief and practices; while fatalism refers to the inability to control events. Religiosity could possibly enhance safety behavior as a person would feel wrong to God if he or she does anything unsafe. On the contrary, fatalism would make a person feel pointless in practicing safety behavior as he or she believes accident would still happen if it is destined to. Most studies on safety in the construction industry were done in western contexts, and not based on respondents’ faith. Very little is known about the safety behaviors of the Muslim workers. Therefore, to fill this knowledge gap, the study attempted to explore the influence of religiosity and fatalism on the behaviors of Muslim workers. The shipyard workers were chosen as the subjects of the study as they represent a good sample of Muslims working in the high-risk construction industry. A cross-sectional survey was based on a convenience sampling, as random sampling was not possible due to the daily changes of the workers in the shipyard. After receiving 452 out of 850 questionnaires distributed, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using the SEM software, AMOS Version 21, to assess the uni-dimensionality, validity, reliability, normality and fit indexes of the data. This was followed by testing of hypotheses, conceptual framework and mediation. The results indicate that religiosity significantly and positively influenced safety behavior, safety attitude, and safety motivation. While, fatalism shows negative correlations with religiosity, safety attitude, safety motivation and safety behavior. It was also found that safety motivation, safety attitude, and fatalism partially mediated the religiosity and safety behavior relationship, which shows that safety behavior is not solely influenced by religiosity, but by safety motivation, safety attitude, and fatalism as well. The proposed framework was found fit to a structural model produced and all ten hypotheses were supported by the data. Since religiosity shows the strongest influence on fatalism, therefore, enhancing religiosity could substantially reduce fatalism and increase the safety attitude, safety motivation and safety behavior as well. The findings will benefit workers and organizations since both are facing increased risk of injuries and loss of profits resulting from an increased rate of accidents caused by unsafe behaviors. It is hoped that the findings would give a better understanding to the organizations, by considering varied perceptions of Muslim workers when implementing safety interventions or policies. Researchers are recommended to expand this kind of study across people of different religions, as safety interventions that work for people from one religion might not work for people from other religions.