Work safety interventions and threat complexity – A formative investigation into why farmers do not act safely

Abstract

Introduction. Fear appeals are a common tactic used in work safety interventions to motivate farmers to adopt safer behaviours. They begin by introducing a threat, followed by information on how to remove the threat. However, fear appeals tend to be ineffective when developed without a firm grasp of the cognitive processes underlying behavioural change. Although previous research on farm safety interventions have investigated fear appeals, they have focused on very narrow threats and behaviours, such as tractor or cow safety, while others have studied the threats but not the cognitive processing. Consequently, not enough is known about the range of threats that evoke fear, how farmers behave when under threat, or their general cognitive beliefs regarding self-efficacy, response cost and response efficacy. In In this study, 23 Swedish Farmers were interviewed and participated in a work safety intervention to identify the range of threats farmers perceive, and actions taken to remove those threats. Materials and method. The extended parallel processing model was used to gain insights into how farmers cognitively processed threats and their subsequent behaviour. Interestingly, it was found that farmers were more fearful of work safety threats related to family members and employees-yet the actions they took to reduce threats were mostly personal in nature. To help explain this finding, a typology of threat complexity was developed by the authors. Results. It was found that simple, common, and direct threats to safety tended to lead to adaptive, threat-reducing behaviours, whereas complex, general, or indirect threats promoted more maladaptive behaviours that reduced fear, but not the threats.

Increasing Machine-Related Safety on Farms: Development of an Intervention Using the Behaviour Change Wheel Approach

“…This paper describes the systematic development of an intervention to improve tractor-related safety on farms and aims to fill the lack of theoretically based and adequately described behaviour change-based interventions in the relevant literature [ 4 , 12 , 60 ]. Tractor safety is a complex process involving the interactions between tractor design, farmers’ behaviour and environmental factors [ 6 , 19 , 31 ]. The previous studies indicate that the focus of the safety interventions was on increasing the adoption of engineering solutions, introducing safety regulations and raising risk awareness [ 4 , 12 ].…”

“…Historically, farm research has relied on introducing technological and regulatory interventions and educational interventions focusing on informing farmers of the risks on farms [ 14 , 15 , 16 ]. However, the normalisation of the danger and persisting risky farm practices indicate a risk awareness to risk prevention behaviour gap [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. The gap suggests that focusing on improving awareness alone cannot mitigate the potential risks on farms.…”

Quantifying internal and external influences on Swedish farmers’ strategic choices and performance outcomes

“…ill-health (Landsbergis et al 1999), especially in dangerous occupations such as farming (see, e.g. Alwall et al 2019;Hall 2007), the literature and widespread adoption seem to support the aggregate cost-benefit to performance. Consequently, we propose that farms that adopt a LPO will have better performance measures than those that do not.…”

Assessing the feasibility, fidelity and acceptability of a behaviour change intervention to improve tractor safety on farms: Protocol for the BeSafe tractor safety feasibility study

“…A recent review by Nilsson (2016) highlighted a lack of focus on older farmers in the intervention literature and that older farmers are less likely to participate and more likely to drop out of the safety initiatives. Previous studies have also indicated that the risk factors, behavioural practices and motivational factors differ across the age groups (3,13,22).…”

“…This often results in farmers prioritising the risk of financial failure over the risk of their own injuries by working long hours and taking unnecessary risks. These factors also act as barriers to adopting preventative safety behaviours such as routine maintenance activities (13). Hence, a change in the farm operation and farmers' behaviour is required to improve the safety on farms.…”