Perceptual determinants of workplace hazards

While there is a general agreement on what constitutes a safety hazard, the guidelines for assessing its risk or level of hazardousness are less clear. Ranking hazards according to their level of hazardousness is critical, in setting safety improvement priorities, and addressing the more hazardous situations in the work environment. Interviews with safety experts and a literature review yielded 25 determinants of hazardousness. After narrowing the list to 11 variables, we empirically assessed the relationship between the overall assessment of a safety hazard's level of hazardousness, and each of these variables. The results indicated that two variables were sufficient to account for 95% of the variance between hazards: likelihood of an injury, and likelihood of slowing down work. This finding was cross-validated by using different groups for the assessment of the overall level of hazardousness and the assessment of the relevance of the different variables. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.