Speaking up under constraints: a configurational JD-R explanation of safety voice among young construction workers

Young construction workers are exposed to high levels of occupational safety risk while often occupying relatively vulnerable positions in work groups. Safety voice is an important participatory mechanism for early hazard identification and occupational injury prevention. However, existing studies have mainly examined the net effects of individual predictors, offering limited insight into how multiple job demands, job resources, and personal capabilities combine to enable or constrain safety voice.

Drawing on the job demands-resources framework, this study adopted a configurational perspective to examine how different combinations of job insecurity, perceived voice cost, psychological safety, safety empowering supervision, job control, and political skill are associated with high and low safety voice among young construction workers. Survey data from 240 young construction workers in China were analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

The findings reveal multiple configurations leading to high safety voice, indicating that no single condition is sufficient on its own. Instead, safety voice emerges when motivational permission, behavioral discretion, supervisory support, and interpersonal capability are jointly present or compensate for selected demand-side constraints. The configurations associated with low safety voice are not simple opposites of those producing high safety voice, suggesting clear causal asymmetry.

This study extends occupational safety and public health research by showing how safety voice among young construction workers depends on configurations of work-related demands, resources, and personal capabilities. The findings provide practical implications for injury prevention, participatory safety management, and workplace health promotion in high-risk construction settings.