Occupational safety and work related factors in Norwegian maritime transport

This study employs three methods to survey factors influencing the occurrence of personal injuries, and assess the importance of work related factors for occupational safety on Norwegian vessels. A share of 17 % of the seafarers in our sample (N=180) had been injured in their work on board in the course of the last two years. Their injury risk was influenced by their age, their position, their vessel type, manning on their vessels and the organizational safety culture on their vessels. Our analyses indicate that organizational safety culture is the most important work related factor in our sample, predicting several safety relevant outcomes, e.g. injuries, risk perception, work pressure, fatigue, working conditions and procedure violations. Our data also indicates that respondents on vessels with low manning (3-4 people) score worse on many of the variables measuring work related factors, e.g. personal injuries, risk perception and organizational safety culture.