The importance of considering emotions in the development of effective safety training courses in the food industry

Wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), such as gloves in the food sector is a safety behaviour which can protect hands and fingers of workers from bruises, abrasions, cuts and punctures and prevent occupational diseases. Previous research has shown that the use of PPE depends on individual factors such (as personality and perceived benefits/barriers), interpersonal aspects (associal influence and social/group norms) and on organizational factors such as availability of and accessibility to PPE (e.g. Lu et al. 2015). However, although emotions play an important role in regard to the decision making of the people (e.g. Hogarth et al., 2011) and can affect perceptions of risk (e.g. Slovic, 2000), previous studies have not given importance to the emotional aspects related to the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyze the role of emotions in using gloves during their task performance in order to develop training courses which could effectively improve the use of gloves or other equipment. 133 workers and employees working in a warehouse were recruited for this research. The results showed that positive emotions in the use of gloves were related to motivation to the safety on safety compliance. Accordingly, the Agreement between State and Regions (2011), which states that the teaching methodology of safety training should privilege an interactive approach that involves the centrality of the worker, these results highlight the importance of considering positive and negative emotions in developing effective safety training courses.