Safety climate, safety behavior, and worker injuries in the Chinese manufacturing industry

It is estimated that over 10,000,000 occupational injuries occur in China each year. This study explored the relationships between four dimensions of safety climate (management commitment, safety supervision, coworker support, and safety training), three dimensions of safety behavior (safety compliance, personal protective equipment, and safety initiatives), and occupational injuries among Chinese manufacturing workers. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a sample of 3970 manufacturing workers from 42 companies in Zhongshan City, China. A structured questionnaire was used to capture participants’ socio-demographic characteristics, occupational safety climate, occupational safety behavior, and occupational injuries in the previous year. Path analysis was used to test the relationships between safety climate, safety behavior and injuries at each workplace. The results revealed significant associations between different safety climates, safety behavior, and unintentional injuries, and provided evidence that safety behavior strongly mediates the relationship between safety climate and unintentional injuries. Our study reinforces the empirical association of occupational safety climate and safety behavior with occupational injuries and identifies some effective measures to prevent and control injuries in Chinese workplaces.