Track: Human Factors and Ergonomics Competition

Abstract

Cold exposure has implications to worker’s health, safety, and occupational performance for the reason that it can cause injuries. Interestingly, an extension of the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) was used to evaluate the factors that affect the ergonomic risk behavior of the employees and their task performance in a cold storage warehouse facility in the Philippines. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was then utilized to analyze the interrelationship among threat appraisal (TA), coping appraisal (CA), ergonomic risk behavior (ER), and cold storage task performance (TP). An online questionnaire was distributed and a total of 255 data samples were collected. The results of the SEM indicated that threat appraisal and coping appraisal had significant direct effects on the task performance of the employees in a cold storage facility. However, the results also showed that PMT had a significant indirect effect on the cold storage employees regardless of having the latent ergonomic risk behavior as not significant. In addition, ergonomic risk behavior was also found to have no significant direct effect on the task performance of the employees in a cold storage facility. Hence, a risk assessment was conducted to identify the cold storage hazards and risk factors and to formulate cold storage operations improvements incorporating these influencing factors on task performance.