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Employee safety behavior is critical for occupational health in work environments threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the widespread and increasingly serious job burnout of employees is a complex and difficult problem for enterprises to handle during any epidemic. Therefore, it is helpful to identify and discuss job burnout and other main psychological factors that affect safety behavior to find appropriate solutions. Using the PLS-SEM method, the study explored the relationship between job burnout and safety behavior against the epidemic, as well as the mediating role of psychological contract. According to the local guidelines for controlling COVID-19, this study revised the safety behavior scale. Data were collected by structured questionnaires in May to July 2020 from Chinese employees (N = 353) who resumed their work after the outbreak of the pandemic. The findings confirmed that job burnout has a negative impact on safety behavior, and psychological contract play a partial mediating role in mitigating the negative impact. Specifically, the transaction dimension and relationship dimension of psychological contract negatively affected safety behavior while the development dimension of the psychological contract was not directly related to safety behavior. It is suggested that enterprises should take effective measures to reduce employees’ job burnout and implement flexible psychological contract management and intervention, so as to effectively improve the performance of work safety behavior. Based on the multidimensional model, the findings of this study shed light on promoting safety behavior to prevent the spread of epidemics.

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Work-related injury insurance (WII) has undergone a long period of rapid growth in China. Therefore, its sustainability, funding, and system of payments deserve serious attention. By analyzing the changes of the numbers of insured, the number of compensated, and the cumulative balance of WII Fund, this article systematically reviews and summarizes the various stages of the development of WII in China. The relationship between the WII Fund’s revenue and expenditure between 1997 and 2018 is analyzed using statistical methods, including the augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root test, the cointegration test, the Granger causality test and an error correction model. Since 1996, China’s WII has been repeatedly adjusted and constantly growing. Our empirical evidence shows that there is a long-term equilibrium and cointegration relationship between the WII Fund’s revenue and expenditure. Revenue is the Granger cause of expenditure, but it does not conform to the fund-raising principle. WII Fund has a large accumulated balance over the years, which violates the principles of fund management and has caused considerable controversy. China’s WII has undergone several regulatory upgrades and management mode adjustments to better ensure its sustainable development. The fund has maintained a basic balance of revenue and expenditure. Nevertheless, at present, China’s WII Fund is facing the pressure of declining fund balance and, as such, medium- and long-term development risks deserve careful attention. As there is no sufficient literature on WII Fund management, this study is a valuable contribution to the existing body of knowledge.