Navigating the Work Passion and Safety Behavior Examining the Role of Safety Locus of Control in the Aviation Sector

Abstract

"Safety" is a very essential factor in human-technology interaction in the aviation industry. There are limited number of studies on determining the strong emotions and motivations that improve the safety behavior perceptions of employees under intense workload and stress in the aviation industry, that cares about the importance to compliance with developing information, communication and security technologies. The aim of the research, which focuses on filling this gap in findings, is to reveal the effect of work passion levels of aviation industry employees on their perception of safety behavior and to determine whether safety locus of control plays a mediating role in this relationship. The research sample consists of employees working in different departments in the Turkish civil aviation industry (n = 541). After confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the model and hypotheses of the research, Medmod macro was used to test multiple regression analysis and indirect effects. Research findings demonstrate that engaging in harmonious passion is a positive predictor of safety behavior. On the other hand, it was found that obsessive passion did not affect safety behavior. Additionally, it was observed that internal locus of control had a full mediating role in the relationship between harmonious passion, obsessive passion, and safety behavior. On the other contrary, it was determined that external locus of control did not play a mediating role in the relationship between harmonious passion, obsessive passion and safety behavior. Inferences were made from the research findings, research limitations were highlighted, and suggestions for the sector and future research were presented.