How do micro-psychological and macro-socioeconomic factors influence construction safety knowledge sharing? Insights from a mixed-AI approach

Abstract

Construction safety knowledge-sharing is beneficial for construction accident reduction. This study explores the relationship between micro-psychological and macro-socioeconomic factors influencing engineering workers’ motivations to share construction safety knowledge via surveys and microblogs. The quantitative results found that better-perceived organisational support in sound economic regions and longer services significantly raised workers’ willingness to share construction safety information. The qualitative results of 3701 microblogs and 8200 comments echoed the survey’s findings that workers in wealthier regions actively share more construction safety knowledge. Besides, governments were key opinion leaders in engineering and construction knowledge sharing. These findings differed from those of overseas social media, where most key opinion leaders were individuals or private companies, and knowledge-sharing motivations came from individuals. This paper extended the knowledge-sharing theory by uncovering the interactions between economic and psychological factors that motivate knowledge-sharing in engineering and construction safety. It is the first to study microblog engineering and construction safety knowledge-sharing. Second, it contributes to the methodological foci by employing the white box H2O Driverless AI model. Third, it offers managerial implications to construction practitioners. This study provides a novel approach to analysing social media data; however, it is limited by the location of the study and social media types.