Screening Construction Safety Risk Factors and Identifying Influence Pathways for Tower Cranes Using Two-Stage Pearson Correlation and fsQCA

Tower-crane safety risk is rarely driven by a single defect; it usually emerges from coupled equipment, environmental, operational and management conditions. To make such risk easier to diagnose and control, this study constructed a 45-factor system across nine dimensions: wind load and operating weather, lifting load and operating conditions, surrounding environment, foundation and anchorage, structural connection, mechanisms and key components, electrical control, safety protection and monitoring, and management and emergency capacity. We then developed a two-stage Pearson correlation screening method to reduce redundant indicators without losing dimensional coverage. The first stage combines Pearson correlations with coefficients of variation to remove local redundancy. The second stage uses an information-redundancy contribution index to evaluate the system-level effect of deleting each factor. Based on 178 valid questionnaires, the data showed strong internal consistency and structural suitability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.961; KMO = 0.898; Bartlett’s p < 0.001). With the final threshold set at p = 0.55, the method retained 16 factors from 45 candidates while preserving all nine dimensions; the retained set remained unchanged when p varied from 0.50 to 0.60. Compared with K-medoids and K-means baselines, the proposed method achieved stronger information explanation and clearer engineering traceability. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) further showed that no single condition was necessary for high risk. Six positive truth-table configurations produced three intermediate solution terms (solution consistency = 0.999; solution coverage = 0.490). Across the pathways, adverse weather, lifting demand, surrounding exposure, weak foundation/anchorage and structural-connection weakness repeatedly appeared as core conditions, while mechanism-protection failure and electrical-management failure formed alternative downstream routes. The findings indicate that tower-crane risk develops through coupled pathways rather than isolated factors, and they provide a basis for pathway-oriented inspection and targeted safety control.