Emotional Engagement in Safety Training: Impact of Naturalistic Injury Simulations on the Emotional State of Construction Workers

Poor hazard recognition skills and high tolerance for risk are well-known contributing factors to high fatality rates plaguing the construction industry. The prevailing safety training techniques involve one-way delivery of slideshow presentations with written handouts that often describe common hazards and generic solutions. Such delivery does not facilitate active learning, development of contextual examples, or emotional engagement necessary for adult learners to gain new knowledge. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a new multimedia learning simulation-based training program called naturalistic injury simulation (NIS). Naturalistic injury simulation involves demonstrating the cause and effect of hand injuries using a hyperrealistic replica of a human hand within realistic scenarios. Out of 1,200 workers that participated, 489 workers were randomly selected for the quasi-field-based longitudinal experiment. Change in emotional states among the participants due to the simulations was analyzed across various demographical dimensions. Analysis showed that workers experienced a surge in negative emotions. Findings suggest that NIS will lead workers across the different demographical groups to perceive more risk by being more vigilant and detail oriented. (C) 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.