Station-level Facets of Support for Safety and Firefighter Safety Behavior Outcomes

Firefighting professional associations, safety professionals and advocacy groups have increasingly called for change in the manner in which fire service organizations operate, but to date there has been little empirical research on programs that could initiate change. This presentation presents information from a study that is one of the first empirical studies to examine how support for safety at the fire station level enhances firefighter safety behaviors. This study assessed how supervisor and fellow-firefighter support for safety influenced general safety behaviors and safety citizenship behaviors. Data were collected from three fire departments in central Georgia. Participants were full-time, career firefighters aged 18 or older (n=349). Structural equation modeling (using MPlus 5.2) was used to test and confirm the theoretical model. This study confirmed a model that describes the relationships between supervisor support for safety, fellow-firefighter support for safety and firefighter safety behaviors. All hypothesized paths were statistically significant and were in the hypothesized direction. Both facets of station-level support for safety positively affected firefighters' general safety behaviors and safety citizenship behaviors. This study has implications for both researchers and practitioners in the realm of occupational safety, public organization safety management and fire department management. While the presentation will present an overview of the research study, the presenter will describe the factors of supervisor support and fellow-firefighter support and will describe how these practices can be implemented within fire service organizations to ascertain improved firefighter safety behaviors and safety citizenship behaviors.