I2SAFE Lab

Impact of Peer Stress on Worker Safety

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Project Overview

Rationale

Construction workplaces are inherently social environments where workers continuously observe and interact with one another. Peer pressure can influence workers’ safety-related decisions, encouraging them to either comply with or deviate from established safety practices. This project investigates how coworkers’ behaviors, particularly unsafe actions and risk-taking tendencies, shape workers’ situational awareness, risk perception, and decision-making. By examining the psychological mechanisms underlying social influence, the research aims to better understand how peer interactions affect safety performance and to develop strategies that foster positive safety cultures and reduce unsafe behaviors.

Impact

  • Quantify how unsafe behaviors spread through social influence within construction teams.
  • Reveal when workers are most susceptible to peer-induced risk-taking and safety violations.
  • Demonstrate how observing coworkers’ actions can alter hazard perception and safety-related decisions.
  • Provide evidence-based strategies for strengthening positive safety norms and team accountability.
  • Support the design of interventions that reduce the contagion of unsafe behaviors on jobsites.

Publication List

Journal Papers

  1. Pooladvand, S., Hasanzadeh, S., Takahashi, G., Park, K. J., & Marroquin, J. (2025). Simulating Social Pressure: Evaluating Risk Behaviors in Construction Using Augmented Virtuality. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2025.3549877

Conference Proceedings

  1. Pooladvand, S., & Hasanzadeh, S. (2025). “The Role of Risk Tolerance in Peer-Influenced Risk-Taking Behaviors on Construction Sites”. The CIB World Building Congress. West Lafayette, Indiana.
  2. Pooladvand, S., & Hasanzadeh, S. (2024). “Exploring Peer Influence on Risk Perception and Safety Performance in Collaborative Construction Workplaces”. International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  3. Pooladvand, S., & Hasanzadeh, S. (2023). “Social contagion theory in construction safety: The effect of susceptibility to peer pressure on worker safety compliance”. International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering. Corvallis, Oregon.

Researcher

Shiva Pooladvand

Collaborators

  • Thomas Redick, PhD, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University

Funding Source