Safety behaviours at sea: The role of personal values and personality hardiness

The present paper examined the influence of personal values and personality hardiness on self-reported safety behaviour among seafarers working onboard general cargo vessels in international trade. We analysed responses from 413 male Filipino seafarers (Mage = 39.51, SD = 10.66) to examine the hypotheses that personal values and hardiness individually and in combination explain variance in self-reported safety behaviour above perceptions of organisational safety climate. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that, controlling for age and safety climate, personal values and hardiness explained a significant proportion of variance in self-reported safety behaviour. Our results also demonstrated evidence of a joint effect of values and personality hardiness. This effect, however, was not in the hypothesised direction. The findings of the present study suggest that an understanding of how personal values and hardiness affect individual safety behaviour may be beneficial to organisations and managers trying to increase maritime safety.

► We examined relations between hardiness, personal values and safety behaviours.
► Respondents were male seafarers in international trade.
► Personality hardiness predicted safety behaviours.
► Conservation values predicted safety behaviours in respondents low in hardiness.