Signal Game Analysis on the Effectiveness of Coal Mine Safety Supervision Based on the Affective Events Theory

Abstract

The main cause of coal mine safety accidents is the unsafe behavior of miners who are affected by their emotional state. Therefore, the implementation of effective emotional supervision is important for achieving the sustainable development of coal mining enterprises in China. Assuming rational players, a signaling game between miners (emotion-driven and judgement-driven) and managers is established from the perspective of Affective Events Theory in order to examine the impact of managers’ emotions on coal miners’ behavior; it analyzes the players’ strategy selections as well as the factors influencing the equilibrium states. The results show that the safety risk deposits paid by managers and the costs of emotion-driven miners disguising any negative emotions affect equilibrium. Under the separating equilibrium state, the emotional supervision system faces “the paradox of almost totally safe systems” and will be broken; the emotion-driven miners disguising any negative emotions will be permitted to work in the coal mine, creating a safety risk. Under the pooling equilibrium state, strong economic constraints, such as setting suitable safety risk deposits, may achieve effective emotional supervision of the miners, reducing the safety risk. The results are verified against a case study of the China Pingmei Shenma Group. Therefore, setting a suitable safety risk deposit to improve emotional supervision and creating punitive measures to prevent miners from disguising any negative emotions can reduce the number of coal mine safety accidents in China.

Influencing Factors, Formation Mechanism, and Pre-control Methods of Coal Miners′ Unsafe Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The mental status of individual workers can also influence their unsafe behaviors, which mainly include safety attitude, safety awareness, work pressure and risk perception. Yang et al ( 37 , 38 ) reported that the main cause of coal mine safety accidents was the unsafe behavior of miners affected by emotions. When workers are in a bad mental state, they are prone to unsafe behaviors.…”

“…They also optimized the occupational safety compliance control system of coal mining enterprises by using the game method. Yang et al ( 37 ) established a signal transmission game between miners and managers based on the game theory model to test the influence of managers' emotions on miners' behaviors. Meng et al ( 75 ) reviewed relevant articles on game theory and safety management during 2010–2019 and affirmed that the application of game theory in safety management research is conducive to determine the causes and motivations of unsafe behaviors.…”

Tripartite Evolutionary Game and Simulation Analysis of Coal Mining Safe Production Supervision under the Chinese Central Government’s Reward and Punishment Mechanism

“…e effective supervision of coal miners' emotions is an important means to achieve coal mine safety [40]. When certain conditions are met, all parties in the game can reach the ideal stable state [41].…”

Deteriorated and Dislocated Multiple Organizational Relationships: An Investigation of Chinese Rock Burst Prone Coal Mines

“…e research of organizational relationships usually adopts game methods. Yang et al examined the impact of managers' emotions on miners' behavior using a bilateral signaling game driven by emotion and judgment [23]. Yu et al described the asymmetry of the game interests between managers and miners with the system dynamics method [24].…”