Concept definition and scale development of miners’ safety commitment

Abstract

Scientific measurement of miners’ safety commitment level contributes to controlling miners’ unsafe behavior. But the existing studies have directly adopted other relevant and well-established scales to capture safety commitment, lacking the exploration of essential connotation of safety commitment. Aiming at these problems, based on the prototype theory, the in-depth interview method and critical incident method were applied to define the connotation of miners’ safety commitment. Following the scale development process, the miners’ safety commitment scale containing 20 items was developed through exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity tests. The results showed that miners’ safety commitment consists of five dimensions, which are affective commitment, normative commitment, relationship commitment, involvement commitment, and promotion commitment. Among them, the largest explanatory contribution is affective commitment, and the smallest explanatory contribution is promotion commitment. The development of the miners’ safety commitment scale enriches the commitment research system and provides theoretical basis and a measurement tool for further exploration of safety commitment.

Keywords

• coal miner
• safety commitment
• concept definition
• scale development
• prototype analysis
• safety management