Psychological Effect of Safety Signs on Message Transmission given Signs Designing Features in Petrochemical Industry

Safety signs are considered as visual intermediates for message transmission and play a crucial role in reducing accidents particularly in petrochemical industries. These signs are effective as long as they are designed in compliance with ergonomic principles، human factors، and cognitive features. Therefore، the present study aimed to investigate the psychological effects of safety signs in transmitting message given their designing features in the petrochemical industry. This descriptive-cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 employees in Mahshahr Petrochemical Complex. A 2 partite questionnaire was used to collect data; the first part for demographic information and the second part included designing features of signs (familiarity، objectivity، simplicity، meaningfulness، semantic proximity). The Pearson correlation test was used to identify the correlation coefficients between signs features and scores given by the participants. Mean and standard deviation of the scores of the signs’ message perception were 60. 73 and 4. 36، respectively. Cognitive features of the signs included familiarity and semantic proximity with a mean of 49. 15 and 66. 78، respectively. The factors of work experience، age، and academic level had no significant effect on guessing the meaning of signs (p>0. 05). The results of this study showed that no significant relationship existed between cognitive features of the signs and transmission of the message and message transmission of safety signs is affected by other features than their design. Therefore، in order to improve individuals’ awareness about familiarity of employees with particular meaning of signs، ergonomic design of safety signs and proper training for perceiving their meaning are proposed.