Abstract
Health and safety issues have always been a major problem and concern in the
construction industry. Although substantial improvements in construction safety
have achieved in the past decades, the industry lags other industries on safety.
Therefore, this research is to explore the worker’s behaviour about safety performance,
mainly focusing on worker’s competence mediated by safety orientation on
safety performance. A questionnaire survey was used for this study validated by the
experts. In all, 600 respondents were randomly selected from government and
private construction industries and yielded a response rate of 430 (71.6%).
Additionally, correlational analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were
used to examine the research hypotheses. The finding showed that worker’s competence
has a significant impact on safety performance. Indeed, safety orientation
mediated the relationship between worker competence and safety performance.
Thus, this study carries values to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) such as
goal 3 (SDG 3) that tries to enhance the good health & well-being of the societies
and workplace through the investigation of the effective factors on the safety
performance of the construction industry. Ultimately, the findings of this study
contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8) through
encouraging the entrepreneurship as are effective measures to eradicate or
decrease forced labour, slavery, and incompetent worker at the workplace (focusing
on behavioural aspects). In this regard, the goal is to achieve full and productive
employment and decent work, for all women and men by 2030.