Testing extrinsic and intrinsic motivation as explanatory variables for the safety climate–safety performance relationship among long-haul truck drivers

• Safety climate promotes extrinsic safety motivation.
• Extrinsic safety motivation reduces the likelihood of future road injuries for truck drivers.
• Under poor safety climate, driver engagement promotes intrinsic safety motivation.

The paper tests the proposition that the organizational climate-behavior relationship is based primarily on extrinsic motivation induced by climate perceptions. Using safety climate as exemplar, the effect of climate-induced extrinsic motivation was compared with that of engagement-induced intrinsic motivation on safety behavior and subsequent injury outcomes. Using a sample of long-haul truck drivers representing lone employees, (individual-level) safety climate perceptions and employee engagement predicted safety behavior, which mediated their effect on subsequently measured road injury outcomes. Consistent with meta-analytic evidence suggesting a non-symmetric compensatory relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, high safety climate undermined the effect of engagement on safety behavior with the reverse being true under low safety climate. This resulted in a moderation effect of engagement on the strength of relationship between climate perceptions and safety behavior. Theoretical and practical implications for climate, engagement, and lone work research are discussed.