How Safety Ritual Sense Affects Construction Workers’ Behavior: The Mediating Role of Safety Psychological Capital

Building a sustainable workplace necessitates a fundamental commitment to employee safety and psychological well-being, particularly in high-risk sectors like construction. While individual unsafe behavior is a primary cause of accidents, the psychological mechanisms linking organizational practices to safety outcomes remain underexplored from an industrial-organizational psychology perspective. This study examines the relationship between safety ritual sense (a psychological outcome of socio-affective organizational practices) and the safety behavior of construction workers, with safety psychological capital (a positive psychological resource) tested as a mediator. Data were collected via questionnaire surveys from 444 construction employees in China and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results confirm a significant positive correlation between safety ritual sense and safety behavior. Furthermore, safety psychological capital significantly partially mediates this relationship, with its four dimensions—confidence, optimism, hope, and resilience—each playing distinct mediating roles. This research elucidates a critical psychological pathway through which ritualized organizational practices enhance safety performance. It provides empirical evidence that fostering safety rituals to cultivate employees’ psychological capital is an effective industrial-organizational psychology intervention, contributing directly to the development of safer, healthier, and more sustainable modern workplaces.