Does the built-environment industry attract risk-taking individuals?

Phua, F. T. T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5736-5973 (2017) Does the built-environment industry attract risk-taking individuals? Construction Management and Economics, 35 (4). pp. 207-217. ISSN 0144-6193 doi: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1237776

Abstract/Summary

This exploratory research examines whether or not those attracted to professional-level occupations in the built-environment industry are innately physical risk-takers and hence potentially, thereby, more likely to countenance or contribute to physically risky workplace climates. Using individual-level data, the occupational attractiveness of the built-environment industry subsectors of construction management and architecture are each found positively and significantly to be predicted by physical risk-taking propensity, but not by a comparator risk-taking propensity, gambling. Conversely, the occupational attractiveness of a comparator profession in financial services is found to be significantly predicted by gambling risk-taking propensity, but not by physical risk-taking propensity. Although exploratory, our finding that two key professions in the built-environment industry are each discretely found to be attractive to physical risk-takers suggests not only that constituent occupations within the industry, but that the industry as a whole might perhaps engender a self-reinforcing suboptimal workplace safety climate. Accordingly, constituent subsectors of the industry may need both separately and collectively to consider the phenomenon of physical risk-taking propensity amongst the professionals it attracts in order effectively to set and manage the site work-place safety climate that such professionals are ultimately responsible for creating and delivering in a sector fraught with physical risks for site workers.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/68062
Identification Number/DOI	10.1080/01446193.2016.1237776
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of the Built Environment > Organisation, People and Technology group
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
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