The current study explores the effect of safety leadership on employees’ safety performance within a multianxious hospitality industry, with belief restoration as mediation and perceived susceptibility as moderation. The tourism and hospitality sector is especially vulnerable to climate-related disruption, including heavy rainfall, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the collapse of infrastructure, resulting in increased occupational safety-related uncertainty for frontline workers. In such cases, successful safety performance depends on regulatory compliance and leadership, as well as psychological safety. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 106 frontline employees across five hotels in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a tourism destination exposed to recurring environmental hazards. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Results indicate that safety leadership does not exhibit a significant direct association with employee safety behavior. Instead, leadership operates indirectly through belief restoration, supporting a full mediation pattern at the structural level. Perceived susceptibility strengthens the relationship between safety leadership and belief restoration and shows a marginal interaction effect on safety behavior. Theoretically, the study refines safety leadership research by modelling belief restoration as a domain-specific cognitive recovery pathway linking leadership cues to safety engagement under prolonged disruption. The findings suggest that in multi-crisis hospitality environments, leadership influence may depend less on direct compliance mechanisms and more on employees’ renewed confidence in the organization’s ability to manage safety threats.
Putranta et al. (2026) studied this question.