Research on the Tournament Incentive Mechanism of the Safety Behavior for Construction Workers: Considering Multiple Heterogeneity

Abstract

The unsafe behavior of construction workers is one of the most important and direct causes of safety accidents. Managers usually develop effective incentives aimed at regulating worker safety behavior. Due to the large number of workers in construction projects, there are multiple differences in fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, which will lead to the complex effect of the traditional mechanism to regulate workers’ safety behavior. In order to improve the effectiveness of incentive measures for worker safety behavior, this paper takes into account the multiple differences of individual workers’ fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, based on the tournament mechanism to construct a competition incentive model. By designing a tournament reward and salary distribution for heterogeneous workers, the occurrence of unsafe behaviors can be reduced. The study found that in terms of the optimal level of safety investment, workers with risk aversion attitude generally invest higher than that of workers with risk preference, no matter whether they have a strong fairness preference or not; In terms of the distribution of tournament rewards, workers with a risk aversion attitude and a higher level of fairness preference need to be given higher incentives.

Developing a Decision-Making Model for Construction Safety Behavior Supervision: An Evolutionary Game Theory-Based Analysis

“…For example, it has been proposed that successful safety supervision largely depends on employee involvement, as workers tend to support the activities that they themselves help to create ( Aksorn and Hadikusumo, 2008 ). Next, some research focused on the structure of responsibility, incentives, and penalties in the enterprises, which reencourage positivity and creativity among workers, resulting in conscious observation of all kinds of safety rules and regulations for production and accomplishment of the goal ( Liang, 2006 ; Ji et al, 2021 ). The relationship between project safety performance and the influence of construction enterprises has been examined ( Hallowell, 2010 ).…”

Evolutionary Game Analysis of Construction Workers' Unsafe Behaviors Based on Incentive and Punishment Mechanisms

“…Sparer and Dennerlein ( 2013 ) collected the safety inspection data of 19 construction projects owned by Harvard University to calculate the frequency and distribution in the incentive plan every month and designed a safety incentive plan to ensure fairness and competitiveness. Ji et al ( 2021 ) researched the tournament incentive mechanism of construction workers' safety behavior with considering multiple heterogeneity and found workers with a risk aversion attitude and a higher level of fairness preference need higher incentive. However, high incentives from managers would only improve workers' safety performance in the short term with its decreased value and shortening the time interval between incentives is more beneficial to promote safe performance (Ghasemi et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Smith and Price ( 1973 ) established the evolutionary stability strategy, which reflected the dynamic balance of the game behavior of bounded rational groups more accurately. Nowadays, scholars have adopted the game theory in many fields to study the decision-making and evolutionary problems including interactive strategies (Ji et al, 2021 ). For example, Meng et al ( 2021 ) analyzed the game behaviors of the government and contractors under four different bonus and penalty strategies in green building projects, and then discovered that dynamic incentives as well as static punishments were the best strategies for contractors to promote projects.…”

Study on Influencing Factors of Construction Workers’ Unsafe Behavior Based on Text Mining

“…However, the construction industry has the characteristics of a long construction cycle, complex working environment, and strong personnel mobility. It is a typical industry with a high incidence of safety accidents ( Ji et al, 2021 ). Taking the production safety accidents of housing and municipal engineering as an example, the latest statistics of national engineering quality and safety supervision information platform of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China show that in 2021, the number of production safety accidents of housing and municipal engineering in China has reached to 721, with 803 deaths, an increase in 29 accidents and 8 deaths over the previous year, all of which have increased to varying degrees.…”