Insights into the mechanism of construction workers' unsafe behaviors from an individual perspective

Understanding the individual mechanism of construction workers' unsafe behaviors (IM-CWUB) is an effective approach to reducing unsafe behaviors on construction site. As such, research on this topic has proliferated. However, the existing literature on the IM-CWUB lacks systematic studies in regard with (a) what is known and unknown and (b) the future directions within this area. To fill in the research gap, this paper aims to 1) systematically summarize the state-of-the-art on the IM-CWUB and 2) provide directions for future research. To this end, literature searching was adopted to identify relevant articles. Ninety-five articles were eventually collected through a two-fold selection. Based on the findings of the selected papers, the relationships among individual factors and construction workers' unsafe behaviors were extracted. This paper reviews and discusses the interactions among the individual factors, the direct and indirect relationships between the individual factors and unsafe behaviors for three aspects of psychological, physiological and psychophysiological mechanism. The findings indicate that there exist some gappy relationships (e.g., the influences of emotions on cognition and motivation) in the interactions. It is also found some contradictions concerning the direction and significance of the relationships between the individual factors and unsafe behaviors. In accordance with the review and in-depth discussion, suggestions for future research are provided. In addition, an integrated framework for the IM-CWUB is also proposed to understand the comprehensive interactions among psychological factors, physiological factors and unsafe behaviors. This systematic review is expected to have not only academic meanings by suggesting future research directions, but also practice value that allows construction safety practitioners to reduce unsafe behaviors.