Safety Attitude as a Predictor of the Sense of Threat in the Workplace, Using the Example of Airport Ground Staff

In its development, air transport is obliged to take into account guidelines related to its sustainability. An important element thereof consists of making sure that the working conditions for all the workers employed in this sector are safe and healthy. The aim of this research was to analyze the relationship between the attitude towards safety and the perceived feeling of threat in the workplace among respondents belonging to the airport ground staff occupational group. The research verified the following: 1. whether a relationship exists between the safety attitude (in the following dimensions: affective, cognitive, and behavioral) and the feeling of threat in the workplace (in the following dimensions: internal discomfort related to the fear of potential threats, the fear of current threats, and seeking to avoid threats); 2. whether attitudes towards safety act as predictors of the feeling of threat in the workplace. A total of 299 individuals took part in the research. Purposive sampling was used, based on criteria related to the respondents being members of airport ground staff. The Safety Attitudes Questionnaire by M. Znajmiecka-Sikora was used in the research. The feeling of threat was assessed using Feeling of Threat at Work Questionnaire by Mamcarz. The results obtained confirmed the assumed negative correlation between the main variables, and at the same time they revealed that among the studied safety attitude components, only the affective component makes it possible to predict the general feeling of threat, being its negative predictor (β = −0.14; s.e . = 0.33; t = −2.27; p = 0.024). The affective component of the safety attitude also constituted a negative predictor of one of the dimensions of the studied feeling of threat, namely seeking to avoid threats (β = −0.22; s.e . = 0.17; t = −3.66; p < 0.001).