Understanding Safety Performance Using Safety Climate And Psychological Climate

This paper aims to explore the relationship between psychological climate, safety climate and safety performance. Safety research is increasingly expanding from a central focus on safety specific explanations of safety performance, to encompass more general management principles (e.g. leadership, role stress, and performance management). This research aims to contribute to this body by exploring the way in which psychological climate can be used to explain safety performance. This paper compares the fit of three competing models of safety performance using structural equation modelling. In the first model safety performance is predict by safety climate only, in the second by psychological climate only and the third is a saturated model using both safety and psychological climate. Comparison of the models revealed that the saturated model provides a better and more parsimonious explanation of safety performance than safety climate alone.