Anticipated Negative Emotions Effect on Incident Involvement Among Civil Pilots

INTRODUCTION: Human factors have contributed to a constant increase in the level and numbers of aviation incident involvement. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the relationships between anticipated negative emotions (ANEs) and incident involvement among Chinese civil pilots. Furthermore, this paper examines the role of risk perception and proactive coping within the relationships in order to understand the mechanisms underlying pilots' involvement in air transport incidents.METHODS: A cross-sectional regression design was used to measure ANEs (Anticipated Negative Emotions Scale), proactive coping (Proactive Coping Scale), risk perception (Pilot Risk Perception Scale), and incident involvement (Hazardous Events Scale) among 295 Chinese civil pilots from China Southern Airlines. Mediation and moderating effects were explored using regression analyses and were confirmed by the bootstrapping approach.RESULTS: The results show that ANEs are significantly correlated with risk perception (r = -0.55) and incident involvement (r = 0.28). ANEs have a direct effect on pilot involvement in incidents and have an indirect effect on pilot incident involvement through the influencing of risk perception. Proactive coping was also found to weaken the direct effect of anticipated negative emotions on incident involvement.DISCUSSION: The safety benefits of proactive coping are more pronounced among pilots with high levels of ANEs. The practical implications of the study include recommendations relating to injury prevention efforts in incident involvement. Future research directions are also discussed.Wang H, Xu Q, Yang C, You X, Ji M.