Thesis

Assessing the mediating roles of safety knowledge, safety culture, and situational awareness in the relationship between risk perception and safety compliance in the chemical and process industries

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2026
Thesis identifier
  • T18070
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 202176369
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Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • The chemical and process industries have considerable risk factors due to the use of hazardous substances and the associated complex procedures used throughout the production facilities. To improve safety in the industry, there is an ongoing debate on how risk perception influences safety compliance, with limited research on mediating factors in this context. This thesis systematically investigates the relationship between risk perception and safety compliance, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of safety knowledge, safety culture, and situational awareness. A mixed-method approach was employed, integrating the analyses of a quantitative survey with qualitative interviews. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test the mediating effects, while Thematic Analysis provided contextual insights from the interviews. The quantitative findings show that safety knowledge and safety culture significantly, yet partially, mediate the relationship between risk perception and compliance, reinforcing their roles in shaping workplace safety compliance. Additionally, it was found that situational awareness did not mediate the relationship between risk perception and safety compliance, as the path coefficient is not statistically significant due to a statistically nonsignificant correlation between situational awareness and safety compliance. Qualitative interviews investigated the non-significant relationship between situational awareness and safety compliance, identifying several key factors which can be organised into groups. Qualitative results suggest that workplace factors identified impair situational awareness, reducing compliance. Conversely, most individual factors identified (e.g., safety knowledge) and all organisational factors identified (e.g., communication) have a positive influence on situational awareness, thereby improving safety compliance. The negative factors reduce vigilance and undermine situational awareness, while the positive factors may combat these negative factors and enhance situational awareness, which could explain the non-significant correlation between situational awareness and safety compliance. The study recommends safety training to enhance risk perception, workload management to improve situational awareness, and a leadership-driven safety culture.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Morran, John
  • Chen, Yi-Chieh
  • Ventura-Medina, Esther
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