International Research on Safety Behavior at Workplace in the Past 50 YearsKnowledge Evolution and Future Prospect

Given that workplace safety behavior research has formed a rich knowledge system in the past 50 years, analyzing the flow and evolution of knowledge in this field, and providing important guidance for improving the modernization of safety production governance in our country. Using a total of 1086 SCI and SSCI journal articles collected in the Web of Science database from 1973 to 2021, a knowledge graph and main path analysis of workplace safety behavior literatures were conducted with visualization and bibliometric tools such as CiteSpace, Histcite and Pajek. The results suggest that international research on workplace safety behavior experiences two rapid developments in 2003 and 2013, and forms a multinational collaborative research network centered on the United States, China, and Australia. The international research on workplace safety behavior has been found to go through three main stages: initial germination, initial development, and rapid development. Although safety climate and safety leadership have always been hot topics in this field, research topics at different stages have undergone multidimensional shift from accident injuries to safety behavior, from safety culture to safety climate, and from safety leadership to safety psychological contracts, reflecting the characteristics of the times and practical needs. Finally, future research directions in the field of workplace safety behavior are proposed from six aspects: research scenarios, perspectives, categories, content, objects, and methods.