Mixed nationalities impact on safety in container ships

Abstract

The growing consensus among safety researchers and professionals is that safety culture plays an important role in creating a safe and  reliable working environment. In order to evaluate the safety culture of an organization, critical safety factors that influence human  behavior, attitude, perception, and performance are identified and studied.  This study is an attempt to identify safety factors in the  shipping industry, particularly in container ships. Surveys were sent to 250 container ships out of 300. Researchers received 789 shipboard  responses from 110 container vessels representing a 44% response rate. A fifty six question survey was developed and for each question the  answer ranged along a five point Likert scale: “Disagree”, “Slightly Disagree”, “Neutral”, “Slightly Agree”, and “Agree”. The individual safety  factor questionnaire contained items on the organizational safety factors, shipboard, and individual safety factors, as well as items on  individual demographic and general information such as nationality, age, gender, and experience (three levels). The Kruskal-Wallis non parametric statistical test revealed that significant differences between the safety factors were identified. The Mann-Whitney pair-wise  comparisons also revealed significant differences based on nationality. The study provides details of statistical analyses of the findings.