Agent-Based Simulation Approach to Analyzing the Impact of Construction Safety Management Behaviors on Workers’ Safety Behaviors

Workers’ unsafe behaviors are consistently considered to be the primary cause of construction accidents. It is widely acknowledged that workers’ cognitive processes, especially in the decision stage, dominate their behaviors, and management behaviors play a pivotal role in the mitigation of workers’ safe behaviors. However, an effective quantitative method for the analysis of workers’ decisions is lacking, thus hindering a clear understanding of the impact of management behaviors on workers’ safe behaviors. This research introduces cumulative prospect theory, derived from behavioral economics, to quantitatively depict the characteristic tendency in workers’ decision stage. Based on this, an agent-based model was established to simulate the impact of management behaviors on workers’ safety behaviors, mainly including four components, namely the definition of agents, environment hazards, interaction rules, and unsafe behaviors. An experiment was conducted to validate the reliability of the simulation model. The results show that it is applicable to incorporate cumulative prospect theory into workers’ decision stage during simulation, and the simulation model is effective for the analysis of management behaviors’ impact on workers’ safety behaviors. The results from the simulation model have the potential to improve the safety management practices of a specific construction project. Thus, this research contributes to the theory and practice of construction safety management.