Accident Analysis and Prevention 42 (2010) 1438–1444 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Accident Analysis and Prevention journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aap Accident under-reporting among employees: Testing the moderating influence of psychological safety climate and supervisor enforcement of safety practices Tahira M. Probst ∗ , Armando X. Estrada Department of Psychology, Washington State University, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686-9600, USA article info Article history: Received 16 June 2008 Received in revised form 1 June 2009 Accepted 30 June 2009 Keywords: Safety climate Accident under-reporting Supervisor enforcement abstract We examined accident under-reporting with data from 425 employees employed in 5 industries with above average risk for employee injuries. We expected that rates for unreported accidents would be higher than rates for reported accidents; and that organizational safety climate and perceptions of super- visor enforcement of safety policies would moderate the relationship between unreported accidents and reported accidents. Results showed that the number of unreported accidents was significantly higher than the number of reported accidents. There was an average of 2.48 unreported accidents for every acci- dent reported to the organization. Further, under-reporting was higher in working environments with poorer organizational safety climate or where supervisor safety enforcement was inconsistent. We dis- cuss the implications of these findings for improving accident under-reporting and occupational safety in the workplace. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Each year approximately 4.1 million work-related injuries and illnesses are reported in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007). This figure represents a rate of about 4.4 cases for every 100 full-time equivalent workers. Recent research suggests that these figures may actually underestimate the true number of non-fatal occupational injuries (e.g., Leigh et al., 2004; Rosenman et al., 2006). Such underestimation occurs when organizations fail to record employee injuries and illnesses in the OSHA Log of Work- Related Injuries and Illnesses (organizational-level under-reporting) or when employees fail to report injuries and illnesses occurring at work (individual-level under-reporting). Organizational-level under-reporting has been linked to multi- ple factors including organizational size (Leigh et al., 2004; Oleinick et al., 1995), industry sector (Daniels and Marlow, 2005), perceived lack of management responsiveness (Clarke, 1998) and organi- zational safety climate (Probst et al., 2008; Zohar, 2003), while individual-level under-reporting has been linked with variables such as fear of reprisals or loss of benefits (Webb et al., 1989; Pransky et al., 1999; Sinclair and Tetrick, 2004); and with a gen- eral acceptance that injuries are a fact of life in certain lines of work (Pransky et al., 1999). This research has advanced our understanding of the factors that influence individual and organizational under-reporting behav- iors. However, it is important to note that little research has investigated the effect of organizational safety climate on the accu- ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: probst@vancouver.wsu.edu (T.M. Probst). racy of employee reports of experienced workplace injuries. And, there is limited research examining how supervisory enforcement of safety practices influence employee reporting behaviors. This study begins to address these limitations by examining accident under-reporting among workers employed in above average risk industries. Specifically, we describe the extent of under-reporting of accidents and illnesses; examine how organizational safety climate influence both the number of experienced accidents and the under- reporting of these accidents; and, we examine how perceptions of supervisor enforcement of safety policies affect under-reporting. Before presenting and discussing our main findings, we provide a review of relevant literature to contextualize the present study. 1. Accident under-reporting & organizational safety climate In the current study, we define under-reporting as a function of both (1) the number of accidents reported by the employee to the organization and (2) the number of accidents experienced by the employee but not reported to the organization. As the discrep- ancy between the number of unreported and reported accidents increases, under-reporting can be said to increase. Thus, we argue that under-reporting is not adequately captured simply by the num- ber of unreported accidents. Rather, to understand the depth of the problem, one needs to ascertain both the number of unreported accidents as well as the number of reported accidents. 1 1 Alternatively, one might argue for conceptualizing under-reporting as simply a function of unreported accidents and total experienced accidents. However, this 0001-4575/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.aap.2009.06.027