Workers’ Risk Tolerance and Occupational Injuries

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between individuals' risk tolerance and occupational injuries. We analyze data from a national representative survey of U.S. workers that includes information about injuries, risk tolerance, cognitive and noncognitive attributes, and risky behaviors. We measure risk tolerance through questions regarding individuals' willingness to gamble on their lifetime income. We estimate zero-inflated count models to assess the role played by such measures on workers' recurrent injuries. We discuss some implications of our results for future research and occupational safety policies. Our results highlight the concurrent and changing role played by individual, work, and environmental factors in explaining recurrent incidents. They show that risk tolerance affects recurrent injuries, although not in the direction that proponents of the concept of proneness would expect. Our measure of risk aversion shows that individuals who are somewhat more risk tolerant have fewer recurrent injuries than those who are risk averse. But the estimated relationship is U-shaped, not monotonic and, therefore, not easy to predict. At the same time, we find that individuals' "revealed risk preferences"-specific risky behaviors-are related to higher injury probabilities. Demanding working conditions, measures of socioeconomic status, health, and safety problems experienced by workers during their youth remain among the most important factors explaining the phenomena of recurrent injuries. So our results contribute also to the important debate about the relationship between health and socioeconomic status.

The Relationship between Risk Perception and Risk Definition and Risk-Addressing Behaviour during the Early COVID-19 Stages

“…In fact, when you study deeper into RP, our findings corroborate only to a certain extent, to the findings of most authors such as Galizzi and Tempesti (2015), Weber et al (2002), Furby and Beyth-Marom (1992) and Byrnes et al (1999), who as noted above stated that an individual can participate in risky behaviour when s/he is not aware of the consequences and that if a person understands and defines risk, s/he can avoid and manage his/her risks, t. When the risk-addressing person is aware of negative outcomes, s/he can avoid the risk. They show that the expectation is that persons with similar risk perceptions will define risk and address risk in a similar way and vice versa.…”

“…Trimpop (1994, p. 9) proposes that RB is "any consciously or unconsciously directed behaviour with a perceived uncertainty about its outcome and/or about its potential benefits or costs to the physical, economic, or psychosocial well-being of self or others." Galizzi and Tempesti (2015) explain that an individual may participate in risky behaviour primarily because they are unaware of the consequences and/or because they are tolerant of risk. Furby and Beyth-Marom (1992) and Byrnes et al (1999) pick up on the former reason by claiming that RB occurs because the person taking the risk has no idea of the negative outcomes.…”

The impact of non‐fatal workplace injuries and illnesses on mortality

“…The most important potential limitation of this study is that unobserved confounders may bias upward our estimate of injury effect. We believe that important candidates are pre‐injury health, health habits, disability, and occupation, all of which can affect both injury rates [Ryan et al, ; Xiang et al, ; Galizzi and Tempesti, ] and health and mortality [Winkleby et al, ; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ; Walter et al, ; Conti et al, ]. The impact of these as potential confounders may, however, be muted by the inclusion of pre‐injury earnings in the survival regressions.…”

Cross-Regional Research in Demographic Impact on Safety Consciousness and Safety Citizenship Behavior of Construction Workers: A Comparative Study between Mainland China and Hong Kong

“…For gender issue, females have been involved in fewer accidents and have a higher risk-avoiding consciousness than males (Galizzi and Tempesti, 2015). Nevertheless, some discussions persist about the regional ambiguity as the female workers sometimes suffer higher risk due to higher job stress and injury rate than male workers (Gordon, 2019).…”