Antecedents of Occupational Health, Safety Behaviour and Safety Performance: A Case Study of Selected Rice Farmers in Ghana

Abstract

Health and safety at work is not only a sound economic policy, but also a fundamental human right that must be protected and ensured at all times. A number of studies in the formal sector have established that personal, organisational and work context factors, including safety behaviour and safety culture, have immense implications for employees’ health and safety. However, the informal sector, especially production agriculture, has been neglected in terms of occupational safety research in the social sciences. This study investigated antecedent of health and safety behaviour and safety performance of Ghanaian rice farmers. The study employed the exploratory sequential mixed methods design, comprising qualitative study (study one) and quantitative study (study two). The data for the study were collected from Kpong, Ashaiman and Okyereko rice irrigation schemes.The qualitative study explored occupational health and safety hazards and the major health and safety incidents that rice farmers in Ghana experienced. The qualitative data was obtained through ten (N = 10) semi-structured interviews with key informant. The theoretical thematic analysis was the analytical procedure for the qualitative data, using Braun and Clarke’s six-step approach. Results of the qualitative study showed that rice farmers in Ghana were exposed to a myriad of health and safety hazards and also experienced several incidents that resulted in health challenges, physical injuries and disabilities. These findings were used to develop a rice farm hazards exposure scale and to adapt the rate of incident reporting scale for the study two. Study two tested the extent to which religiosity, hazards exposure and safety culture predicted safety performance in a cross-sectional survey with 469 the rice farmers comprising 122 female and 347 males.The data were analyzed using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with the SmartPLS 3.6.2. It was concluded that religiosity is an important antecedent of both positive safety behaviour and safety University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh xv culture, while safety culture is an important predictor of safety behaviour and safety performance. Safety behaviour also partially mediated the effect of safety culture, but not the effect of religiosity on safety performance. Furthermore, both safety culture and safety behaviour were found to be significant moderating variables of the effect of hazards exposure on safety performance. The findings underscore the need to distinguish safety behaviour and safety performance in safety science research. Also, the hazards exposure scale and an integrative safety performance model developed in this study could be used and tested in future studies.The implications of the findings were discussed within certain theoretical frameworks. Recommendations were also made for safety management policy directions, organisational practitioners and directions for future research.