Barriers to the Adoption of New Safety Technologies in Construction: A Developing Country Context

Abstract

The adoption rate of new technologies is still relatively low in the construction industry, particularly for mitigating occupational safety and health (OSH) risks, which is traditionally a largely labor-intensive activity in developing countries, occupying ill-afforded non-productive management resources. However, understanding why this is the case is a relatively unresearched area in developing countries such as Malaysia. In aiming to help redress this situation, this study explored the major barriers involved, firstly by a detailed literature review to identify the main barriers hampering the adoption of new technologies for safety science and management in construction. Then, a questionnaire survey of Malaysian construction practitioners was used to prioritize these barriers. A factor analysis further identified six major dimensions underlying the barriers, relating to the lack of OSH regulations and legislation, technological limitations, lack of genuine organizational commitment, prohibitive costs, poor safety culture within the construction industry, and privacy and data security concerns. Taken together, the findings provide a valuable reference to assist industry practitioners and researchers regarding the critical barriers to the adoption of new technologies for construction safety management in Malaysia and other similar developing countries, and bridge the identified knowledge gap concerning the dimensionality of the barriers.

Predictors to Increase Safety Technology Adoption in Construction: An Exploratory Factor Analysis for Malaysia

“…Factor analysis is primarily used to examine the relationships between a large number of significantly correlated variables and reduce them to a manageable level for appropriate interpretation. In recent years, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) technique has been used in a variety of construction management areas such as delay and cost overruns (Kim et al, 2016;Le-Hoai et al, 2008), safety performance (Ajayi et al, 2021;Li et al, 2018) and innovation orientation (Yap et al, 2022;Yusof et al, 2017) factors. In the present study, the primary objective was to obtain coherent and meaningful underlying dimensions (principal factors) of the surveyed predictors (subfactors); thereby assisting in understanding the latent factor structure.…”

Analysis of Labor Resources Wastage in China’s Real Estate Brokerage: From the Perspective of Opportunity Costs

“…For example, insufficient labor in the construction industry is one important reason of project delay (Chiu & Lai, 2017). Also, shortage of construction workers and ageing workforce become barriers to the adoption of new safety technologies in construction (Yap et al, 2022). Moreover, the excess entry is often associated with a prevalence of inexperienced agents during house price booms.…”

Investigating the impact of emerging technologies on construction safety performance

“…Safety planning is strongly related to safety performance (Chellappa et al, 2019;Khalid et al, 2021). Various research studies have already proven that technology plays a critical role in safety planning (Bansal, 2011;Chellappa et al, 2019;Choe and Leite, 2017;Yap et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2015).…”

“…According to the study by Yap et al (2022), it is necessary to switch to a high-tech and professional construction industry to have a better economic environment in developing countries. Nnaji and Karakhan (2020) investigated the use of technology for safety and health management in the construction industry.…”

“…According to the study by Yap et al. (2022), it is necessary to switch to a high-tech and professional construction industry to have a better economic environment in developing countries.…”