Risk perception, barriers, and working safely with silica dust in construction: a psychological network approach

In the construction industry workers are frequently exposed to hazardous substances. To explore and describe construction workers' barriers and motives to (not) work safely with hazardous substances, we examined their perspectives on the health risks, perceived barriers, and intention to use preventive measures with regard to silica dust. Specifically, we studied perspectives on the use of face masks, dust collection on power tools, and using a vacuum cleaner instead of a broom.

Semi-structured interviews (n = 13) and a pen and paper survey (n = 187) were administered on construction and training sites. Only executive workers could participate in the study. We approached the behaviour of using specific preventive measures as an emergent property of a complex network of interacting psychological variables. To analyse the structure of these 'behavioural decision networks' we applied a psychological network.

Through the exploratory semi-structured interviews, we identified themes relevant for our survey, like perceived exposure, risk being considered as part of the job, and perceived barriers like time, effort, and properties of the work environment. Construction workers were generally aware their health is at risk due to occupational exposure to silica dust. At the same time, they are not overly concerned about that risk. Network analysis suggests that concern does play a moderate role in the behavioural decision networks, suggesting that a lack of concern may encourage unsafe behaviour. Construction workers' level of automaticity to use specific preventive measures was relatively low. Barriers to use preventive measures such as time and effort play a relatively key role in the networks. A general intention to work safely hardly played any role in the networks, while a specific intention to use preventive measures played a more prominent role. Age and work experience did not play a role in the network. Non-parametric tests and descriptive comparison of networks suggest differences in for example the relative importance of specific variables.

For two preventive measures, different variables may be more successful intervention points to foster safe work. Increasing levels of concern, improving automaticity of use, addressing specific intention to use preventive measures in risk communication, and offering preventive measures at time and location where relevant tasks are performed, are discussed as possible intervention points to foster working safely with silica dust in construction. Future studies should further substantiate these findings.