The Moderating Effect of Risk Tolerance on the Hazardous Attitudes and Safety Behavior of Maritime Pilots: a Chinese Case

The safety psychology of maritime pilots has a significant impact on their safe operational behavior. This paper aims to analyze the hazardous attitudes of maritime pilots towards their safety behavior and investigate the effect of their risk tolerance on this process through a hybrid of Structural Equation Model (SEM) and multi-level regression analysis. Primary data was collected from a survey from Chinese pilots working at Shanghai port, and a total of 306 collected surveys was analyzed. The study shows that hazardous attitudes have a significant effect on the safety behavior of maritime pilots, and the degree of risk tolerance plays a significant moderating role in this process. If the value of hazardous attitudes of maritime pilots is higher than an average level, his/her safety operational behavior will gradually degrade with the increased degree of risk tolerance. If the value of hazardous attitudes is lower than the average level, the behavior will gradually be safer with the decreased degree of risk tolerance.