Exploring the influence of seafarers’ individual characteristics on the perceived risk in Maritime emergencies: A simulator study

Abstract

The perceived risk experienced during the operation of a ship varies among seafarers, likely due to individual differences and variations in task requirements. Hence, this study aims to investigate the impacts of seafarers’ individual characteristics on their perceived risk under various emergencies by conducting a high-fidelity ship-handling simulator experiment. A linear mixed effects model is built to assess the impact of individual characteristics (e.g. age, navigational experience, profession, professional level) on the perceived risk of seafarers. Results show that the perceived risk of maritime pilots is significantly higher than deck officers under three emergency situations. The lower perceived risk is found from seafarers with higher navigational experience or at a higher professional level in situations involving poor visibility or an emergency incident. Additionally, the seafarer’s age could affect the perceived risk only in the circumstance of an emergency incident. Another finding is that seafarers at a high professional level (i.e. first mate, second-class pilot) exhibit higher perceived risk than those at a low professional level (i.e. second mate, third-class pilot) under the emergency of close encounters. Seafarers’ individual characteristics have different impacts in various emergency situations, with the influence of their profession being particularly significant. Maritime administrations were suggested to develop diverse training programs for various seafarers in order to reduce the occurrence likelihood of human errors in maritime accidents.

Keywords:

• Maritime safety
• human error
• physiological signals
• perceived risk
• individual difference
• ship-handling simulator

Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank anonymous referees for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions, which considerably improved the exposition of this work. This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 52072237), which is also sponsored by Program of Shanghai Academic Research Leader (Grant No. 23XD1421500) and European Research Council project (TRUST CoG 2019 864724).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).