The New Path to Improve Construction Safety Performance in China: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Approach

Scaling up a Positive Safety Culture among Construction Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Ghana

The Ghanaian construction industry faces challenges in managing safety, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that need more resources. This research addressed the critical need for a positive safety culture framework specifically designed for SMEs in Ghana. The study adopts the Delphi research approach, which involves a series of questionnaire 'rounds' to gather and refine information and develop a collaborative safety culture framework with SME stakeholders. The study employed a mixed-methods strategy, harnessing quantitative and qualitative data to meet the research goals. The critical components of the developed framework included safety commitment, adaptability, information, awareness, culture, and performance. The research offered evidence-based recommendations for effective positive safety practices across Ghana's SMEs by analysing the relationship between these interventions and safety outcomes. Applying the framework should reduce workplace accidents and foster a positive safety culture that aligns with international best practices.

Optimization of construction safety resource allocation based on evolutionary game and genetic algorithm

In the construction industry, ensuring the safety performance of a project relies heavily on the effective allocation of safety resources. As the importance of mental health in the construction industry increases, evolutionary game theory can be used to analyze the interaction mechanism of various factors affecting safety performance during the construction phase. The objective of this paper is to construct an analytical model that combines evolutionary game theory with genetic algorithms from the perspective of Leader-Member Exchange Ambivalence. The model aims to quantify and compare the various factors that influence achieving the expected safety state and identify the specific necessary constraints. Initially, we analyzed the relationships among construction site employees, divided them into superiors and subordinates, and established a game model and payoff matrix based on the research background. Next, we introduced genetic algorithms into the model via the replicator dynamic equation for optimization. We adjusted the coefficients of safety risk level, psychological expected return, moral identity, and other factors to simulate various construction site scenarios. Simulation and optimization results indicate that genetic algorithms provide more accurate reference values for safety resource allocation compared to preset or manually assigned values.

Intelligent Construction Technology Adoption Driving Strategy in China: A Tripartite Evolutionary Game Analysis

The adoption of intelligent construction technology (ICT) is regarded as one of the important strategies for the transformation and upgrading of the Chinese construction industry and the achievement of high-quality development. In the ICT adoption process, the government is the driving subject, the owner is an important subject, and ICT is applied in practice by the general contractor. This study first analyses the evolutionary process and the impact of participants' strategy choices on the system equilibrium by establishing a tripartite evolutionary game framework which includes the government, the owner, and the general contractor as the main stakeholders; then tests the feasibility and rationality of the model by analysing the ESS corresponding to the three phases of ICT adoption. The results show that the conditions for each ESS to be established mainly depend on the relationship between the costs and benefits of each stakeholder, and that owners are more sensitive to government subsidies and penalties than general contractors, so the government should establish a dynamic reward and punishment mechanism based on the results of the model. High adoption costs are a key barrier to ICT adoption for both owners and general contractors. This paper provides a new framework for research related to ICT adoption and a reference for the strategic adjustment of stakeholders in ICT adoption.

Behavior Choice Mechanisms and Tax Incentive Mechanisms in the Game of Construction Safety

The violation behavior of construction workers is an important cause of construction accidents. To reduce the violations of construction workers and to stimulate the supervision behavior of local governments and construction enterprises, an evolutionary game model is constructed in this paper. Then, the behavior choice mechanism of each player is analyzed. Finally, an incentive effect analysis method is put forward, and the incentive effects of different tax incentive mechanisms are analyzed. This research finds that only when the safety punishment imposed on construction workers is large enough does the supervision behavior of local governments and construction enterprises encourage construction workers to choose not to violate the regulation. Increasing the tax rate of a construction enterprise in the case of accidents can encourage the construction enterprise to supervise, but it inhibits the supervision behavior of the local government. A numerical simulation verifies the effectiveness of the incentive effect analysis method, which provides a new method for the incentive effect analysis of incentive mechanisms.

Developing a Decision-Making Model for Construction Safety Behavior Supervision: An Evolutionary Game Theory-Based Analysis

Without the active participation of enterprises and front-line workers, it is difficult for the government to perform effective supervision to ensure behavioral safety among front-line workers. To overcome inadequate government supervision and information attenuation caused by vertical management mode and limited resources, and to change passive supervision into active control with the proactive participation of enterprises and workers, this paper combines the entity responsibility mechanism and the third-party participation mechanism based on government supervision to analyze the decision-making process of government and enterprises on safety behavior supervision. An evolutionary game model was established to describe the decision-making interactions between the government and construction enterprises under the two mechanisms, and a simulation was performed to illustrate the factors influencing the implementation of the mechanisms. The results show that both mechanisms have a positive effect on government supervision, and the third-party participation mechanism was found to be working better. The implementation of the two mechanisms is influenced by punishment, subsidy, and cost, and it has different sensitivities to the three influencing factors. This study provides a theoretical framework for enhancing the government supervision mechanism, and the decision-making between the government and construction enterprises enhances the management form and guides their actual supervision practices.

Data-Driven Construction Safety Information Sharing System Based on Linked Data, Ontologies, and Knowledge Graph Technologies

Accident, injury, and fatality rates remain disproportionately high in the construction industry. Information from past mishaps provides an opportunity to acquire insights, gather lessons learned, and systematically improve safety outcomes. Advances in data science and industry 4.0 present new unprecedented opportunities for the industry to leverage, share, and reuse safety information more efficiently. However, potential benefits of information sharing are missed due to accident data being inconsistently formatted, non-machine-readable, and inaccessible. Hence, learning opportunities and insights cannot be captured and disseminated to proactively prevent accidents. To address these issues, a novel information sharing system is proposed utilizing linked data, ontologies, and knowledge graph technologies. An ontological approach is developed to semantically model safety information and formalize knowledge pertaining to accident cases. A multi-algorithmic approach is developed for automatically processing and converting accident case data to a resource description framework (RDF), and the SPARQL protocol is deployed to enable query functionalities. Trials and test scenarios utilizing a dataset of 200 real accident cases confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the system in improving information access, retrieval, and reusability. The proposed development facilitates a new "open" information sharing paradigm with major implications for industry 4.0 and data-driven applications in construction safety management.

Developing a Construction Safety Standard System to Enhance Safety Supervision Efficiency in China: A Theoretical Simulation of the Evolutionary Game Process

Labor safety is one of the most fundamental indicators to improve contractors’ sustainability. Safety supervision plays a crucial role in affecting the safety performance of infrastructure projects. However, studies of standards development to enhance safety supervision efficiency are far from complete. Safety standards define safe behaviors for construction workers and hazard control processes in the workplace, and they are usually considered as an important part of safety control. In addition, the systematic reform of construction safety standards in China provides an innovative perspective to enhance safety supervision efficiency by linking standards to supervision. For this purpose, this paper proposes the concept and framework of the “Construction Safety Standard System (CSSS)” through expert interviews. CSSS hierarchically classifies safety standards and integrates similar standards. Its implementation will significantly influence the behavioral decisions of safety supervision stakeholders. Evolutionary game (EG) theory is applied to demonstrate the decision-making procedure in CSSS establishment and application. Furthermore, system dynamics (SD) is utilized to model and analyze equilibrium states under different supervision strategies. Meanwhile, case studies are implemented to assess the CSSS’s effectiveness in reality. The numerical results indicate that through CSSS implementation, the strategy choice fluctuation of supervisors and contractors is suppressed and a more desirable stable equilibrium is reached. The government tends to supervise and contractors tend to obey safety standards consciously. The findings reveal that CSSS can enhance safety supervision efficiency and have meaningful implications for theoretical study on safety supervision and construction safety management practice.

Construction safety: an analysis of the cross-influence of economic, construction, and accident death factors

To explore the relations between the number of accident deaths (NCD) and various factors in construction safety, a multiple linear regression model was established, based on the panel data of economy, construction labor, and the number of accident deaths in 31 provinces (regions) of China from 2009 to 2018. The results show that the average total profits and taxes (TPAT), and the death rate of ten thousand people (DR) are positively correlated with NCD, while the labor productivity (LP) is negatively correlated with it. Under the condition that other factors remain unchanged, NCD increases by 0.02 per a hundred million CNY. However, if DR increases by one ten thousand, NCD will increase by 8.66 on average. On the contrary, when LP increases by a hundred million CNY per ten thousand people, NCD decreases by 0.19. The model also predicts NCD in different provinces and cities from 2019 to 2020 with the method of quadratic exponential smoothing. As well, practice results show that the model is effective and practical.

Developing a Dynamic Supervision Mechanism to Improve Construction Safety Investment Supervision Efficiency in China: Theoretical Simulation of Evolutionary Game Process

The construction industry suffers from poor safety performance caused by the joint effect of insufficient safety investment by contractors and inefficient safety supervision by the government because of the information gap between the two sides. The present study aims to put forward a new pathway to improve safety investment supervision efficiency and analyze the decision-making interactions of stakeholders under this new pathway. For this purpose, this study establishes a safety investment information system to eliminate the information gap between the government and contractors for construction projects in China and further develops a dynamic safety investment supervision mechanism based on this. Evolutionary game theory is used to describe the decision-making interactions among stakeholders under the current static supervision mechanism and the dynamic supervision mechanism proposed in this research. Moreover, system dynamics is adopted to simulate the evolutionary game process and analyze the supervision effect and equilibrium state of different supervision mechanisms. The results reveal that the proposed safety investment information system could facilitate the transition of the supervision mode from static to dynamic; the evolutionarily stable strategy does not exist in the current static penalty scenario; and the dynamic supervision mechanism that correlates penalties with contractors' unlawful behavior probability can restrain the fluctuation of the evolutionary game model effectively and the players' strategy choices gradually stabilize in the equilibrium state. The results validate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic supervision mechanism in improving supervision efficiency. This study not only contributes to the literature on safety supervision policy-making but also helps to improve supervision efficiency in practice.

Default Behaviors of Contractors under Surety Bond in Construction Industry Based on Evolutionary Game Model

In construction projects, some contractors will take default actions against the contracts to obtain maximum profits and damage the owners’ benefits as a result. In the construction markets where effective supervision is not performed well, contractors have more opportunities to default. Surety bonds were designed to solve the default problems and promote the sustainable development of the construction markets. This paper was proposed to explore the interactions between owners and contractors and investigate the influence of surety bonds (high penalty and low penalty) on the default behavior of contractors based on a static and dynamic evolutionary game analysis model. The results showed that applying the surety bond strategy is effective at decreasing the probability of the contractors’ default behavior when the credit system based on a surety bond system is well developed in the construction industry and the cost of the surety bond is low enough. Therefore, government strategies such as a better development of the credit system driven by surety bonds and the subsidies on surety bonds to reduce the cost can mitigate the contractors’ default behavior and keep the sustainability of the construction markets.

Evaluation of the Quality Supervision System for Construction Projects in China Considering the Quality Behavior Risk Transmission

In construction projects, improper quality behavior of a participant results in quality behavior risks, which can transmit to the downstream participants and may cause detrimental effects on the quality of the entity finally constructed. Controlling the transmission of quality behavior risks is the key to effectively supervising and ensuring the quality of construction projects. In this study, the effectiveness of the quality supervision system of construction projects in China was investigated by considering the transmission of quality behavior risks. A multi-player evolutionary game model consisting of the players of quality supervision of a government department, upstream participant (UP), and downstream participant (DP) was generated. By using the system dynamics theory, the game model was simulated to determine the stability of the evolutionary system and to evaluate the effectiveness of China’s current quality supervision system under different scenarios. The results showed that there is no evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) in the evolutionary system of the current quality supervision system in China and there are fluctuations in the evolution process. It revealed that high risk exists in the current quality supervision system in China. To resolve the problem of the low efficiency of the current Chinese supervision system, a dynamic penalty and incentive method is developed, which has been proven to be able to effectively control the quality behavior risks in construction projects and hence ensuring the quality of the entity finally constructed.

Developing Key Safety Management Factors for Construction Projects in China: A Resilience Perspective

It is acknowledged that construction safety is pivotal to the project management objectives. Meanwhile, the concept of resilience provides an effective and pragmatic countermeasure to improve the safety management level of construction projects. However, the “resilience” has not gained considerable attention in the construction safety management system. In this context, the paper aims to develop the key safety management factors for construction projects from the resilience perspective. Firstly, the theoretical framework and key safety management factors of construction safety management system based on the resilience theory are proposed. The importance of each factor is then obtained by using the method of structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that information management, material and technology management, organization management and personnel management would improve the safety and resilience of the project. Specifically, improving the resilience of information flow to strengthen the interaction among elements of the system can enhance the safety management level. These findings can be used as references for construction safety managers to improve the abilities of preventing safety accidents and recovering after safety accidents.

Dynamic Evolution of Safety Regulation of the Ridesharing Industry under Social Media Participation

The emergence of ridesharing has spread against the background of the sharing economy. There have been a lot of controversies since the emergence of ridesharing, particularly regarding regulatory issues. The safety regulation of the ridesharing industry involves many parties, including governments, platform companies, and society at large. Currently, because of the influence of information asymmetry, it increases the uncertainty of governments’ regulation effect and the difficulty of making regulation measures. Meanwhile, social media, one of the most important forces of social regulation, has not paid enough attention to playing an appropriate role in the safety regulation of the ridesharing industry. Therefore, this study constructs an evolutionary game model between governments and platform companies that concerns the safety regulations of ridesharing passengers under social media participation. The influence path of social media is explored by model solution and numerical simulation. Our results indicate that social media participation has a positive impact on this safety regulation. Specifically, social media participation could reduce governments’ regulatory costs and encourage it to strictly regulate. The exposure of social media could bring losses to platform companies involved and promote platform companies’ investments in improving passengers’ safety. This study provides a decision basis for governments to introduce social media in the safety regulation of the ridesharing industry.

Evacuate or Stay? A Typhoon Evacuation Decision Model in China Based on the Evolutionary Game Theory in Complex Networks

The Chinese Government has played an important role in organizing the evacuation of typhoon disasters, and in-depth analysis of individual behavioral decisions is a prerequisite for adopting an effective emergency organization plan. Existing evacuation plans only consider how the Government issues the early warning and organizes the mandatory evacuation, but does not formulate effective policies to improve the efficiency of self-evacuation of evacuees and lacks the understanding of individual evacuation decision-making. Using game-based theory in a small-world network context, we build an evolutionary game model of evacuation decision diffusion between evacuees in the context of a complex network. The model simulates the effects of guaranteeing the evacuation order and providing material supplies on the evacuation decision diffusion in a small-world network in China. The results showed that various levels of policy-implementation led to different rates of evacuation. As the cost-reduction of the evacuation process increased, the evacuation response rate in the social system increased. In contrast, as the rate of reducing the non-evacuation cost decreased or the cost-reduction rate of non-evacuation increased, the evacuation response rate in the social system decreased. The study findings provided insights on emergency planning and the effectiveness of their implementation in social networks, which can be used to improve evacuation policy.

Research on Safety Regulation of Chemical Enterprise under Third-Party Mechanism: An Evolutionary Approach

In recent years, China’s chemical industry has incurred frequent safety accidents which seriously impact the social environment and public safety. Traditional approaches have reached a bottleneck due to a lack of relevant professionals in the government regulation of chemical enterprise safety production. Thus, a new safety regulation mechanism should be conducted. In this paper, we constructed an evolutionary game model of chemical industry safety regulation based on limited rationality, and the influence of main parameters on the equilibrium evolution process is studied by system dynamics simulation. The results show that government regulation authorities play a leading role in the process of chemical industry safety regulation and increasing punishment will help to achieve an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). What is more, the feasibility and effectiveness of the third-party regulation service mechanism are verified, and the market access threshold of third-party regulation service needs to be improved to stop the occurrence of rent-seeking activities in the regulatory process. In summary, the introduction of third-party regulation service entities to the chemical industry safety regulation process has far-reaching implications for promoting the healthy development of China’s chemical industry.