Mechanisms of safety-transformational leadership influence on construction workers’ safety voice: a dual-mediation model of psychological contract and safety motivation

Purpose Safety voice behavior can play a crucial role in the actual operation of organization safety management. How to motivate employees in high-risk industries to actively provide safety voice and improve the company’s safety performance is an important but under-addressed question. Design/methodology/approach This research builds a hypothesis model based on social information processing theory, introducing safety motivation and psychological contract as mediating variables, in order to investigate the mechanism of the role of safety-transformational leadership on construction workers’ safety voice behavior. 902 construction workers completed a questionnaire in order to test the research hypotheses through the use of structural equation modeling, correlation analysis, and the Bootstrap test. Findings According to the research, (1) safety-transformational leadership affects both prohibitive and promotive voice in an advantageous manner; (2) The psychological contract plays a mediating role between safety-transformational leadership and safety voice (promotive voice and prohibitive voice); (3) Through safety motivation, safety-transformational leadership indirectly supports the prohibitive and promotive voice of construction workers. Originality/value This research expands the theoretical research of safety voice, helps construction enterprises to provide ideas and methodological support for accident prevention from the perspective of safety voice.