The impact of coal miners’ emotions on unsafe behavior: A study on the mediated effects with a moderating role

This study aims to reveal how emotions influence Unsafe Behavior among coal miners, addressing the increasingly severe safety issues in the coal mining industry. As the complexity of mining environments grows, the impact of workers’ emotional states on safety behaviors has garnered widespread attention. Based on emotion regulation theory and psychological mediation models, we analyzed survey data from 250 workers across multiple subsidiary mining units of a single coal mining enterprise in China, employing regression analysis and Bootstrap methods to examine the relationships among emotions, unsafe psychological states, and Unsafe Behavior. Additionally, we introduced safety climate as a moderating variable to enhance the explanatory power of the model. The results indicate that positive emotions significantly reduce the occurrence of Unsafe Behavior by lowering unsafe psychological states, whereas negative emotions significantly increase Unsafe Behavior by enhancing unsafe psychological states. Furthermore, unsafe psychological states play a mediating role between emotions and Unsafe Behavior, highlighting the crucial role of psychological factors in the emotional influence on behavior. Further analysis shows that safety climate moderates the relationship between negative emotions and unsafe psychological states. Specifically, under a high safety climate, the impact of negative emotions on unsafe psychological states is weakened. This study provides theoretical support and practical reference for safety management in the coal mining industry, offers empirical evidence for the development of emotional regulation and psychological intervention strategies, and emphasizes the importance of fostering a favorable safety climate.