Associations between safety climate and emotional reactions to platform movements onboard an offshore installation

The present study focuses on emotional reactions to platform movements onboard an offshore installation, and to investigate to what degree the safety climate onboard the installation had impact on such reactions. The sample consisted of 179 respondents, taking all three work shifts into consideration, representing all fields of work onboard. In general, emotional reactions to platform movements were not associated with the safety climate. The exception was instrumental protection. However, this tendency was to some extent altered when controlling for various job related and demographic variables. Gender, marital status and offshore experience promoted a moderate relationship between social support and emotional reactions. Moderate associations between emotional reactions and safety involvement were promoted by personnel category, offshore experience and age. Personnel category, offshore experience and age also promoted moderate associations between emotional reactions and satisfaction with aspects of safety and contingency measures. The respondents indicated engagement in emotion-focused and perception-focused coping responses when anticipating platform movements onboard. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.