Work motivation of safety professionals: A person-centred approach

Work motivation, albeit being a significant predicator of safety professionals' work attitudes and behaviours, are underexplored in safety research. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study examined how different types of work motivation were combined to influence safety professionals' work-related attitudes and intentions to quit. By adopting a person-centred approach, four motivation profiles were identified from a sample of 475 construction safety professionals, representing amotivated (9.9%), balanced motivation (35.1%), moderately autonomous (9.3%), and highly motivated (45.7%) groups. The results show that the highly motivated safety professionals displayed a significantly higher level of affective organisational commitment in comparison with the rest three groups. Safety professionals in the moderately autonomous group showed the highest level of career commitment and the lowest intentions to quit current organisations. This study contributes to the safety science literature by presenting configurational solutions of work motivation. As different groups of safety professionals are characterised by different motivation profiles, this study suggests that interventions should be targeted at the motivation profile level.