It does not occur by chance: a mediation model of the influence of workers’ characteristics, work environment factors, and near misses on agricultural machinery-related accidents

Abstract

Agriculture is among the most hazardous productive sectors, and farm machinery is a major source of injury. In the present study, a mediated model was used to test the role played by workers’ characteristics, work environment factors, and near misses in predicting agricultural machinery-related accidents in a sample of Italian users (n = 290). Hours worked per week (via the mediation of an adverse work environment) showed a positive association and years of work experience (via the mediation of risk perception) showed a negative association with the probability of being involved in a near miss, which in turn showed a positive association with the probability of being involved in a machinery-related accident. Implications for tailored preventive interventions are discussed.

Keywords:

• Agriculture
• human factors
• near miss
• occupational accident
• risk perception
• mediation model

Notes

¹ As shown in Table 1, in our data-set, participants’ age and years of experience in agriculture showed a very strong correlation. To avoid an excessive conceptual overlap and problems of empirical collinearity, both in the theoretical and in the empirical sections of the paper, we reasoned in terms of years of experience rather than in terms of age.

² We tested the unidimensionality of this and the next scale using CFA instead of Cronbach α because the strength of the latter depends, beyond their mean correlation, on the number of items, and our first battery was composed of only four items.

³ Parallel analyses, performed by substituting participants’ years of experience in agriculture for their age, showed analogous results (available upon request).