Factors affecting safety behaviors of aircraft maintenance technicians: A study on the civil aviation industry in Turkey

Safety management is one of the main priorities of organizations which operates in high-risky environments. Many accidents occurred in recent years have revealed the importance of human behaviors in safety management. This led to increase in the number of studies on human behaviors in terms of safety. In the academic literature, many studies attempted to identify and specify the antecedents, dimensions and consequence of safety behaviors. Although, the function of the safety behaviors in accident prevention has been emphasized in the literature, no study has been conducted in aviation industry. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors affecting safety behaviors of aircraft maintenance technicians and fill the gap in the literature. For this purpose, a model has been designed to investigate the impact of safety leadership and safety climate on safety participation and compliance behaviors. The model has been tested through a survey distributed to employees working as an aircraft maintenance technician in Turkish Civil Aviation Industry. In accordance with previous studies, the results proved that safety leadership and safety climate predict the safety behaviors of aircraft maintenance technicians. Moreover, it has been revealed that safety climate function as a mediator between safety leadership and climate. On the other hand, results showed that employees have a moderate positive perception regarding the assessment of individual safety performance and safety priorities. Also It was found that employees remained undecided about reporting unsafe situations arises from other group members.