1. Introduction
Professor Fu in the project team where the author works put forward the behavior safety “2-4” model [
1], as shown in
Figure 1 below. The project team members used the model to analyze 748 coal mine accidents. For details, see the website information in Ref. [
2] and several published papers. The paper deals with coal mine accident analysis [
3] and accidents in other industries [
1,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8]. The behavior safety “2-4” model points out that safety culture directly affects the safety management system, the safety management system directly affects people’s safety knowledge, safety awareness, safety habits, safety physiological and safety psychology, and safety culture indirectly affects safety knowledge, safety awareness, safety habits, etc. through the safety management system. However, the correlation between the safety culture, safety management system, safety knowledge, safety awareness and safety habits that caused the accident has not been studied. Therefore, this paper intends to use the questionnaire design method to obtain data to verify the correlation between safety culture, safety management system and safety knowledge, safety awareness and safety habits.
Ref. [
9] analyzes the research status of China’s safety culture, and introduces the development, achievements and prospects of China’s safety culture, in which the author and the member of the project team (Gui Fu, Wei Jiang) are mentioned. This article is also a continuation of the safety culture research content of the author and author’s research team.
At present, scholars have studied the relationship between safety culture and safety management, safety culture and safety performance, safety culture and other related content. These studies are both qualitative and quantitative.
Regarding the relationship between safety culture and safety management, many scholars have found that safety culture has a direct or indirect impact on safety management. For example, Guldenmund [
10] analyzed the safety culture of the core, performance and overall dimensions. It is concluded that, through the combination of these three safety cultures, the concept of safety culture can be reshaped and the analytical potential of safety culture in understanding the development and implementation of safety management systems can be enhanced. Robertson [
11] conducted a safety culture survey using the university aviation program and found a relationship between safety management implementation and safety culture, safety improvement and safety culture, management commitment and safety culture. Hendershot [
12] found that an effective process safety culture is very important to achieve effective process safety management, and a good safety culture is the key to excellent process safety management. Lin et al. [
13] found that the intensity of safety culture has a direct or indirect impact on the safety management system and can affect the safety performance of the company. Rollenhagen and Wahlström’s [
14] research shows that the safety of nuclear power plants cannot always be based on prescribed instructions. The management system and safety culture should solve this problem, and should better understand the structure and content of the management system and their impact on the safety of nuclear power plants. McDonald et al. [
15] studied various aspects of the safety management system and safety culture of the four organizations and found that the safety management systems and safety culture of the four organizations are largely consistent. There is no difference between the four organizations’ adherence to mission procedures and safety attitudes, but with different subcultures, indicating differences in the concept of safety culture. Grote [
16] studied the uncertainty in management and proposed that safety culture is one of the means. It is suggested that the different roles and importance of safety culture depend on the selected uncertainty management method. It is required that any safety culture assessment must be evaluated through the matching between the uncertainty faced by the organization and the uncertainty forms selected to deal with. Gao et al. [
17] established a model to explore the mediating role of safety management practices in the development of process safety culture. Four safety management practices, including organizing responsibilities/procedures, communication and coordination, safety training, and inspection and monitoring, have been found to have positive mediating effects on safety culture, with inspection and monitoring presenting the highest mediating effect.
For the research on safety culture and behavior, Fung et al. [
18] investigated the relationship between people’s safety culture and behavior, attitude and cognition, and made a comparison. The research showed that organizational commitment has a high correlation with communication, supervisors, individuals, workers, risk-taking behavior and other aspects. Tylor [
19] studied the safety culture model associated with the organization’s shared safety awareness to observable safety behavior, and used accident cases to study the relationship between safety culture and observable safety behavior. Ismail et al. [
20] evaluated the impact of environmental behavior factors on the development of safety culture and found that the internal environment of the organization is weak and will affect safety behavior. In addition, through interviews with senior management, it was discovered that the company’s safety culture status was contributed by the established system. The Nævestada et al. [
21] study found that safety cultures at different analytical levels influence different types of unsafe behaviours, which in turn influence the risk of work injuries. It is recommended to study the impact of culture on traffic safety at different levels of analysis (i.e., countries, departments, and organizations).
Regarding safety culture and safety performance research, Kalteh et al. [
22] uses the keywords “Safety Culture and Safety Performance” and “Safety and Performance” to select English articles published in 2005–2017 from different databases, and evaluates the role of safety culture in safety performance in 31 articles extracted. It is found that improving the safety culture level can effectively reduce accidents and improve safety performance indicators. Feng et al. [
23] uses a variety of techniques to collect data from 47 completed construction projects in Singapore. Research shows that the safety performance of construction projects depends on the synergies between safety investment, safety culture and engineering hazards. Chen et al. [
24] explored the interactive relationship between Taiwan’s construction industry safety culture and corporate safety performance, and found that safety culture has certain predictive power and influence on Taiwan’s construction industry safety performance.
There are also related studies on the relationship between safety culture or safety management system and knowledge. For example, Vinodkumar et al. [
25] used a questionnaire survey to measure employees’ cognition of six safety management practices and self-reported safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety compliance and safety participation. It turns out that safety knowledge and safety motivation are key factors in interpreting these relationships. Firoozi et al. [
26] found that knowledge is an important source of capital for an organization and can only be correctly created and managed in a healthy cultural environment. The paper adopts a health, safety, environment and cultural model as a management model, which enables people to have a deep understanding of the health and safety culture that promotes the interaction and transformation process. Azer et al. [
27] explored the relationship between organizational culture, knowledge management, and patient safety performance. The study found that different dimensions of organizational culture are associated with more effective knowledge management, and knowledge management is associated with better patient safety performance. Warszawska et al. [
28] identified six aspects of safety culture through safety culture assessments: knowledge and skills, awareness, information flow, monitoring and supervision, management commitment, and continuous improvement. Kuimet et al. [
29] studied the links and developments between human resource management, organizational safety culture and knowledge management literature, which found that the concept and framework of human resource management can play an important role in the communication of safety knowledge within the organization.
This paper intends to use data to verify the relevance between safety culture, safety management system and safety knowledge, safety awareness, and safety habits.
6. Correlation Verification between Safety Culture and Safety Management System and Safety Knowledge, Safety Awareness and Safety Habits
By analyzing the data, the sample distribution is not particularly consistent with the normal distribution, and there is no linear relationship between the two. Therefore, Spearman rank correlation coefficient in correlation analysis is selected for analysis, and the value range of the correlation coefficient in the analysis result is between −1 and +1. The larger the absolute value is, the stronger the correlation was, and the symbol indicates the correlation direction. In addition, 0–0.09 is not correlated, 0.1–0.3 is weakly correlated, 0.3–0.5 is moderately correlated, and 0.5–1.0 is strongly correlated [
32,
33].
Table 3,
Table 4 and
Table 5 list the correlation coefficients between the three categories.
This paper studies the correlation between safety culture, safety management and safety knowledge, safety awareness, and safety habits. Since the behavior safety “2-4” model believes that safety culture directly affects safety management, and safety management directly affects safety knowledge, safety awareness, and safety habits, it is expected that safety culture and safety management are related, preferably having a strong correlation. The same is the relationship between safety management system and safety knowledge, safety awareness, and safety habits. However, the results obtained at the end of this paper are found to be moderately related, indicating that the relevant relationship to be proved in this paper is successful, but further research is needed to prove whether the correlation can achieve strong correlation and what factors affect the correlation. This is the content of the next study. In the behavior safety “2-4” model, the safety culture indirectly affects safety knowledge, safety awareness, and safety habits through safety management system. The expectation is to prove that safety culture is related to safety knowledge, safety awareness and safety habits. The results obtained in this paper prove that the two are correlated and weakly correlated.
Therefore, this paper has succeeded in determining the correlation between safety culture, safety management and safety knowledge, safety awareness and safety habits through the questionnaire survey. The next step is to further study whether the relationship between safety culture and safety management, safety culture and safety knowledge, safety awareness, and safety habits can achieve strong correlation and factors affecting the correlation.