Cultural Beliefs, Attitudes to Safety Rules and Perceived Safety Climate: a Study on a Sample of Workers of African Origin Living in France

Safety management in organizations takes too little account of the cultural beliefs of workers. Despite the cultural diversity that characterizes the working population, the contribution of cultural beliefs to the understanding of attitudes towards risk in general, and of perception of safety climate in particular, remains underexplored. In France, the significant presence of workers of African origin in the workplace suggest to analyze the relationships between cultural beliefs, attitudes to safety rules, and perceived safety climate in workers of African origin. Referring to the existing literature on these three dimensions (Ngueutsa et al. 2023; Auzoult and Ngueutsa 2019; Zohar 2010), we hypothesized that both reasoned acceptance of the rules and acceptance of the rules based on collective experience mediate the effect of three dimensions of cultural beliefs—namely, beliefs related to the protection and celebration of life, to group identification and belonging, and to manifestations of joy—on perceived safety climate in these workers. The study was conducted by questionnaire on 216 workers of sub-Saharan African origin, living in France. Results revealed that cultural beliefs relating to the protection and celebration of life was negatively associated with reasoned acceptance of the rules and with perceived safety climate. But, reasoned acceptance of the rules was positively associated with perceived safety climate. This suggests to take into account the cultural beliefs of workers and their attitude to safety rules in a multicultural professional context, when designing safety management practices.