Institutional arrangements and construction safety in China: an empirical examination

Previous studies merely attempted to identify factors affecting safety performance from the micro perspective of project management, while they never questioned why those factors, such as lack of the top‐management support and training, existed. A macro perspective, informed by the corollary of the Coase Theorem, was adopted here to show that suitable institutional arrangements are essential for better safety performance in a construction industry. Province‐level construction safety records in China from 1994 to 2000 were used to test the effects of institutional arrangements on construction safety in China. Major factors affecting construction safety were found to be the implementation of construction safety laws, the rate of subcontracting, while neither the extent of using temporary workers, nor the availability of resources, nor the level of per capita GDP have any effects.