SAFETY ATTITUDES AND SAFETY AMBIVALENCE AMONG OFFICERS FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND NORWAY

This study is conducted with a sample of Norwegian and Philippino officers sailing on Norwegian owned vessels. A self administered questionnaire with 36 items, together with 14 questions about age, sex, education, occupation, duration of employment, involvement in accident and a summary question on safety attitude, was used to collect the data. A total of 991 questionnaires were returned from 141 vessels and 16 shipping companies, giving a calculated response rate of 67%. Of the officers 49% were from the Philippines and 51% from Norway. Nearly all respondents were male. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in 6 dimensions/scales with a Cronbach alpha higher than 0.65 that were used as input in regression analysis. Attitude ambivalence has often been found to have moderating effects on attitude-intention relations (Costarelli and Colloca, 2007). In this paper Safety ambivalence is measured as an index of mixed attitudes based on two safety affect variables, one with positive and one with negative connotation. The index is computed as a “Griffin-index” (see, for example, Thompson et al., 1995; Connor and Sparks, 2002) based on the two variables Positive affect (PA) and Negative affect (NA), respectively, where Safety ambivalence = (PA + NA)/2 - |PA - NA|. Safety ambivalence has both a direct negative effect on Positive safety attitude as well as a moderating effect on the links from antecedents to Positive safety attitude. Norwegian and Philippino officers showed no significant difference with respect to Fatalism.

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