The impact of fleet-level and organization-level safety climates on safety behavior among Thai civilian pilots: The role of safety motivation

Past research suggests that safety climate plays an important role in influencing safety-related behaviors; however, little research has considered whether, how and why different levels of safety climates may interact to influence individuals’ safety behaviors. Based on a unique sample of 610 civilian pilots in Thailand, this research aims to examine whether pilots’ perceptions of ‘group’ safety climate (herein called ‘fleet’ safety climate) and organizational safety climate can lead to more safety behaviors. This study also examines the mediating role of safety motivation. Based on the latent moderated mediation structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, the result confirmed that both fleet safety climate and organization safety climate had independent positive effects on pilots’ safety behaviors (i.e., safety compliance and safety courtesy) via an increase in their safety motivation. Furthermore, fleet safety climate was found to interact with organizational safety climate such that its influence became stronger when organizational safety climate was low. These findings suggest that, while both fleet and organizational safety climates can play a crucial role in directly influencing pilots’ safety motivation and safety behaviors, fleet safety climate can emerge as a substitute when there is a lack of emphasis on safety at the organizational level. The knowledge from this research can be used to formulate safety policies at different organizational levels to mitigate aviation risks.