How Does Project Team Leaders’ Intellectual Stimulation Associate with Construction Personnel’s Psychological Safety Climate? A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Background: Transformational leadership positively influences safety climate perceptions. Transformational leadership has four dimensions, and safety climate can be operationalized at different levels. Few research efforts, however, have been made to investigate the association between specific transformational leadership dimensions and safety climate at the individual level (i.e., psychological safety climate, PSC). Methods: Drawing on the interactive approach to forming safety climate, this study developed a multiple mediation model linking project team leaders’ intellectual stimulation (IS) to construction personnel’s PSC via safety-specific leader–member exchange (LMX) and team member exchange (TMX). A random sample (N = 292) of construction personnel based in Hong Kong is employed to validate the model. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. Results: Both safety-specific LMX (specific indirect effect = 0.189) and safety-specific TMX (specific indirect effect = 0.032) significantly mediate the relationship between IS and PSC, although the direct association between them is insignificant. Age significantly moderates the IS–PSC relationship, with a stronger association for younger personnel (β = 0.481, p < 0.001) than for older personnel (β = 0.195, p = 0.029). Conclusions: The findings reveal that the relationship between IS and PSC is fully mediated by safety-specific LMX and TMX, with vertical exchange (LMX) playing a substantially more prominent mediating role than lateral exchange (TMX). These results suggest that improving construction personnel’s PSC requires developing project team leaders’ intellectually stimulating skills and fostering high-quality leader–follower safety exchange within project teams.