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There is a growing realisation that, in order for behaviour change to occur in
occupational settings, underlying attitudes and beliefs need to be changed.
This argument appears plausible given the evidence that health and safety
demands have shifted beyond compliance to regulations, where individuals
and organisations carry out health & safety activities against their own
personal beliefs or company ethos.
The documented constraints and opportunities from the health and safety
literature will therefore be reviewed according to a framework of
psychological construct domains of health behaviour change proposed by
Michie, Johnston, Abraham, Lawton, Parker, and Walker (2005). The
framework is designed for use by psychologists and non-psychologists for
interventions to improve evidence-based practice in public health settings. It
comprises the following domains: ‘ knowledge’, ‘skills’, ‘social/professional
role identity’, ‘beliefs about capabilities’, ‘beliefs about consequences’,
‘motivation and goals’, ‘memory and attention’, ‘environmental context and
resources’, ‘social influences’, ‘emotion’, ‘behaviour regulation’ and ‘the
nature of the behaviours’. These psychological domains feature in a number
of theories but in the main are based on social cognition theory developed by
Bandura (1977, 1986). According to social cognition theory, behaviour is
determined by expectancies, incentives and social cognitions. Applied to
health and safety behaviour expectancies includes: situation outcome
expectancies, for example that not undertaking health safety activity may lead
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