Daily emotional demands on traffic crashes among taxi drivers: Fatigue and safety motivation as mediators

Abstract

Many studies have validated that emotional demands are one of the main stressors that lead to fatigue, decreasing the safety behaviour in services work-related. However, studies to date have relied on long-term emotional demands rather than on the short-term fluctuation in emotional demands. The main aims of this research was to investigate the influence of individuals, as well as the daily levels of emotional demands on self-reported crashes, mainly through daily acute fatigue and safety motivation. The study was conducted among taxi drivers (N = 96) over a period of six days for both, morning and afternoon sessions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As expected, it was found that increased levels in an individual's daily emotional demands were related to acute and chronic fatigue, where only acute fatigue had an influence on safety motivation. In addition, safety motivation decreased the rate of self-reported crashes. These results suggest that the increment level of emotional demands has an indirect relationship to traffic crash rates, mainly through fatigue and safety motivation. Keywords: Emotional demands, Job demands-resources (JD-R), Acute fatigue, Chronic fatigue, Safety behaviour, Taxi drivers