Measuring the effects of Safety Management System practices, morality leadership and self-efficacy on pilots’ safety behaviors: Safety motivation as a mediator

• This paper examines the effects of organizational, group and individual aspects factors on pilots’ safety behaviors.
• The direct and indirect effects of selected predictors on pilots’ safety behaviors are confirmed.
• Safety motivation plays an essential role as a mediator between the selected predictors and pilots’ safety behaviors.
• The managerial implications for both human resource management and enhanced airline safety are discussed.

Pilot safety behavior is viewed as a critical determinant of airline safety performance, and thus it is crucial to identify the factors which may enhance such behaviors. This study adopts an integrated perspective and considers three antecedents of this behavior, including organizational, group and individual factors. Specifically, this research simultaneously examines the effects of pilots’ perceptions of Safety Management System (SMS) practices, fleet managers’ morality leadership and pilots’ self-efficacy on flight crews’ safety behaviors through the mediation of safety motivation. Using a sample of 239 commercial pilot participants, and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique, the results indicate that both perceptions of SMS practices and self-efficacy have direct, positive effects on pilots’ safety behaviors, while the effect of fleet managers’ morality leadership on such behavior is fully mediated by pilots’ safety motivation. The managerial implications for both human resource management and enhanced airline safety are also discussed.