Recent conceptual and methodological advances in behavioral safety research afford an opportunity to integrate past and recent research findings. Building on theoretical models of worker performance and work climate, this study quantitatively integrates the safety literature by meta-analytically examining person- and situation-based antecedents of safety performance behaviors and safety outcomes (i.e., accidents and injuries). As anticipated, safety knowledge and safety motivation were most strongly related to safety performance behaviors, closely followed by psychological safety climate and group safety climate. With regard to accidents and injuries, however, group safety climate had the strongest association. In addition, tests of a meta-analytic path model provided support for the theoretical model that guided this overall investigation. The implications of these findings for advancing the study and management of workplace safety are discussed.

Thousands of deaths and disabilities occur because of occupational accidents each year in the United States, including 5,804 work-related fatalities and 4.1 million nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses in 2006 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2007). Given these statistics, researchers have devoted much effort to studying workplace safety. Although an impressive quantity of information has resulted, much of the behaviorally oriented occupational safety research is plagued by lack of theory, weak methodology, and unclear conceptualizations of constructs. Moreover, studies of antecedents to safety have tended to focus on either individual differences or contextual factors but rarely on both. Additionally, though previous studies have summarized aspects of this literature (Clarke,...