1. Introduction
According to related studies, mismanagement, defective design, and deliberate violation by miners can cause serious coal mine fatalities and injuries [
1]. It is worth noting that the front-line miners’ behavior can directly affect coal mine safety production [
2]. Previous studies have confirmed that miners’ behavior is governed by both external factors (work environment and organizational management) and internal factors (personal traits and psychological state) [
3]. Particularly, managers with primary power play a key role in shaping and encouraging miners’ behavior. However, external factors often do not directly affect miners’ behavior, but rather influence miners’ behavior by affecting their psychology [
4]. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the factors that influence miners’ safety behavior at the individual level to help managers take countermeasures to improve safety behavior.
Personal traits are significant internal factors affecting the behavioral choice of miners [
3]. Work values are the personal traits expressed by employees at work, reflecting their inner needs and value orientation, and serving as the value criteria for judging work behaviors [
5]. The self-verification theory states that individuals choose behaviors that are aligned with their self-concept in order to maintain self-consistency [
6]. Work values belonging to individual self-concept have an impact on miners’ work behavior [
7,
8,
9]. Previous studies have confirmed the positive effect of some dimensions of new generation miners’ work values on safety performance [
10]. Additional research on the relationship between other dimensions of work values and miners’ safety behavior is to be added. In view of this, this study intends to further explore the in-depth impact mechanisms of work values on miners’ safety behaviors.
According to the self-verification theory [
6], individuals are more interested in information that is aligned with their self-concept and reinforce it by integrating and extracting such information to enhance their sense of control over the outside world. Psychological empowerment is the employees’ positive psychological perception after being empowered at work and is a continuous work motivation [
11]. Work values are concerned with comfort, independence, and growth at work [
5], and psychological empowerment focuses on self-efficacy, work meaningfulness, autonomy, and the influence of work [
11]. There are similarities in terms of content between the two. Therefore, individuals can reinforce psychological empowerment when they integrate and internalize relevant information based on work values, which means that work values can promote psychological empowerment. Similarly, work values can guide individuals’ work behavior, and psychological empowerment, which is similar in content to work values, can also influence individuals’ work behavioral choices. Previous studies have verified that work values promote employees’ psychological cognitions [
12,
13,
14], and employees are motivated by psychological empowerment to choose behaviors that are beneficial to the organization [
15,
16,
17]. However, few scholars have explored the mediating role of psychological empowerment between work values and safety behavior. Thus, this study constructs a mediating model based on psychological empowerment, to explore the influence of work values on miners’ safety behavior.
Safety climate is a perceptible situational factor that reflects the safety conditions of work environment and the organization’s attention to safety [
18,
19]. According to the trait activation theory, when a situational factor matches a personal trait, it reinforces the influence of that trait on the behavior in question; conversely, it weakens that influence [
20,
21,
22]. Safety climate has a positive effect on employees’ safety behavior [
23,
24], which is consistent with work values. In view of this, this study explores the moderating role of safety climate in the relationship between work values and miners’ safety behavior. Given the similarities in content between work values and psychological empowerment, safety climate is considered to serve as a moderator in the influence of psychological empowerment on miners’ safety behavior. Previous research has confirmed that safety climate has an indirect effect on individual behavior through the interaction with individual psychological perceptions [
25,
26]. At present, little is known about whether the safety climate can moderate the relationship between psychological empowerment and safety behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the moderating role of safety climate between psychological empowerment and miners’ safety behavior.
In summary, based on self-verification theory and trait activation theory, this study develops a structural equation model with psychological empowerment as a mediating variable and safety climate as a moderating variable to reveal the impact mechanism of work values on miners’ safety behavior, and enrich the related research on work values and miners’ safety behavior.
5. Discussion
In this study, a structural equation model was constructed to explore the causal relationships among work values, miners’ safety behavior, psychological empowerment, and safety climate. The results showed that work values not only directly and positively influence miners’ safety behavior, but also indirectly promote miners’ safety behavior by enhancing miners’ psychological empowerment. However, there was no significant moderating effect of safety climate between work values and safety behavior, and between psychological empowerment and safety behavior. The above findings may provide coal mine leaders with effective management insights to improve the coal mine safety situation.
5.1. Theoretical Implications
The results confirmed that work values positively affect miners’ safety behavior. Specifically, the most influential effects were competence and growth work values, followed by status and independence work values, and comfort and security work values. The result is consistent with the finding of Na and Li [
10], who confirmed that five dimensions of work values (relationship identity, creativity orientation, development orientation, benefit orientation, and independence) enhance the safety compliance and safety participation of new generation miners, while self-orientation negatively affects safety compliance and safety participation. In contrast, this study divided the dimensions of work values in a different way, which is a useful supplement to the study by Na and Li [
10] and further affirms the role of work values in promoting safety behavior. Moreover, the expanded scope of the respondents also makes the findings more informative. Self-verification theory also explains the finding that work values positively influence miners’ safety behavior [
6]. A stable self-concept can affect individuals’ behavioral performance. Therefore, miners’ work values guide their safety behaviors that are consistent with work values.
This study examined the positive effect of work values on psychological empowerment and the positive effect of psychological empowerment on miners’ safety behavior, respectively, which expands the range of individual factors influencing psychological empowerment. Meanwhile, the mediating role of psychological empowerment between work values and miners’ safety behavior was confirmed by calculating CI. Specifically, psychological empowerment fully mediated the relationship between comfort and safe work values and safety behavior, between status and independent work values and safety behavior, and played a partial mediating role between competence and growth work values and safety behavior. The result is similar to a previous study [
14], which asserted that new generation employees’ work values promote their deviant innovation behavior by enhancing their psychological empowerment. Compared to the study by Hou et al. [
14], this study was conducted with front-line miners in coal mines, further confirming the result that psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between work values and employees’ behavior in the field of coal mine safety. Meanwhile, the self-verification theory was creatively applied to explain the mediating role of psychological empowerment [
6]. Miners select and internalize external information based on their own work values. In the process, their work values and psychological empowerment are simultaneously reinforced, prompting them to improve safety behavior.
The results showed that the moderating effect of safety climate was not significant either between work values and safety behavior or between psychological empowerment and safety behavior. In other words, the effects of miners’ work values and psychological empowerment on safety behavior are not influenced by the level of safety climate in the coal mine. Although the moderating role is not confirmed, the analysis of the causes can still provide implications for future relevant studies. The possible reasons for this result are twofold. On the one hand, for a high-risk industry such as coal mining, safety is the most basic and important factor. Coal mines attach a high degree of importance to safety and create a safety climate through a series of measures, such as conducting regular safety training, enhancing safety promotion and improving safety norms. As a result, the safety climate in coal mines is generally maintained at a high level and does not change significantly. Miners who have been in the high-level safety climate for a long time lack sensitivity to changes in the safety climate. On the other hand, miners’ work values and psychological empowerment are stable psychological states formed during their daily work and do not change significantly due to changes in the safety climate. In conclusion, the effects of miners’ work values and psychological empowerment on safety behavior are not influenced by the level of safety climate in the coal mine.
5.2. Practical Implications
The current study highlights the importance of work values and psychological empowerment in shaping miners’ safety behaviors. Organizational management factors have an extremely important impact on miners’ psychology and behavior. Therefore, we encourage mine managers to assess miners’ work values and psychological empowerment and to develop support strategies to reduce unwanted consequences.
The findings suggest that coal mines should support miners’ work values as much as possible. Since safety climate was not found to be broadly linked in this study, more research is needed to understand how organizations and managers shape and influence miners’ work values and safety behavior. Therefore, managers may need to experiment with different management methods and strategies and recognize that individual miners may respond differently to different management approaches or strategies. Ensuring that managers and supervisors take the lead in complying with various safety systems, delegate authority appropriately, and take responsibility for decisions, conditions, near misses, and injuries may be basic management measures. A review of incentive mechanisms may also be valuable to ensure that miners are not encouraged to engage in unsafe behaviors and are at the same time recognized and rewarded for their safety contributions at work. Managers can support miners by recognizing their capabilities, encouraging them to participate in safety management, and supporting them with autonomous development. Paying attention to and respecting miners’ personal pursuits and career growth, succeeding in identifying miners’ strengths, and giving them the right guidance to turn their personal pursuits into positive work values may also help to support miners’ safety.
According to the conclusion that psychological empowerment plays a mediating role between work values and miners’ safety behavior, miners should enhance the level of safety behavior by enhancing psychological empowerment (self-efficacy, work meaningfulness, autonomy and the influence of work). First, managers should assign jobs to miners according to their personal traits, such as coal mining, transportation, ventilation and so on. Successfully completing tasks within their own capabilities will improve miners’ perceived self-efficacy and work meaningfulness, which in turn will enhance their safety behavior. Secondly, managers should recognize and support miners’ performance at work, and reward miners for standard production and outstanding operations by holding regular commendation meetings. Material or motivational rewards can enhance miners’ work meaningfulness and make them feel that their behavior is influential in the organization, so as to promote them to actively choose safety behaviors, such as complying with safety regulations, reporting safety hazards in a timely manner, and completing target tasks, etc. Finally, coal mines should reduce the concentration of power and ensure that miners have sufficient autonomy in their positions. With greater autonomy at work, miners are more willing to communicate with colleagues on safety issues and share safety resources. The increase in relevant knowledge reserves helps miners to enhance safety behavior in production.
The high-risk characteristics of the coal industry require not only that miners pay psychological attention to safety and implement safety behaviors, but also that managers ensure that the workplace is safe for miners. First, managers should improve safety rules and regulations, which are the foundation of coal mine safety. Furthermore, managers should invest sufficient safety funds to upgrade production equipment and hire excellent technicians to ensure a rational coal mining workflow and reduce safety hazards in the workplace. Next, managers should regularly conduct activities such as safety training and safety drills, which can contribute to improving the mine’s emergency response capabilities so that risks can be controlled in time and unnecessary losses can be reduced. Finally, the manager should have a complete picture of the coal mine safety situation in order to address safety issues at all times. Therefore, managers need to conduct regular safety inspections and maintain effective communication with miners.
5.3. Limitations and Future Research
This study also has some limitations. First, the self-reporting method was used to collect primary data. Miners may tend to exaggerate their own safety behaviors. Although the common method variance was not severe, the reliability of the analysis results was still affected to some extent. Thus, future studies should collect longitudinal data at no less than three time points to more accurately explain the causal relationships among variables. Second, the data were obtained from front-line miners in Chinese coal mines, so the findings may not be applicable to other industries. In the future, we can expand sample diversity by conducting cross-industry research to make the findings more generalizable. Finally, a model with a limited number of variables was constructed. Future research could consider the mediating or moderating role of other variables in the model, such as mental health and job stress, or further explore the effects of work values on other behaviors of miners. In particular, more attention should be paid in the future to the role that is played by organizational factors (e.g., safety leadership, task type, safety culture, etc.) in the model, which may explain the insignificant moderating role of safety climate.