Inclusion of the Occupational Stress Model in Human Reliability Analysis

This study attempts to analysis human error from psychological perspective with introducing the occupational stress models into human reliability analysis (HRA). With classifying the performance shaping factors (PSFs) into two categories, we put forward the task demands and resources method. This method describes the qualitative relationship between the PSFs in the task context and the psychological processes of the operator. A human reliability experiment has been conducted and the experiment results proved the validity and flexibility in this method. Introduction As the system complexity increases in different industrial fields, the human-machine interactions have become more frequent. Thus, the accidents led by human factors have been gradually increased in recent years. According to the relative studies [1], human factors can be account for 60% of industrial accidents. In response to this situation, researchers have conducted a series of studies aiming at reducing human errors in the industrial field and the HRA is the main focus among all these efforts [2, 3]. Nevertheless, the existing HRA methods are tended to build direct relationship between the human performance and PSFs, which are influencing factors in the task context, while failing to consider the psychological process under such relationship. In this paper, we incorporate the occupational stress model into the HRA and developed a complete process to analysis human error from psychological perspective. Firstly, we classify the PSFs into two types: the task demands and the task resources. Then, a qualitative approach is introduced to build the relationship between the two types of PSFs and the two crucial psychological factors: the motivation and the strain. After that, we go further to explore the human performance with different motivation intensities and stress level. An experiment has been conducted to verify our hypothesis and the experiment results proved the validity and flexibility in the task demands and resources model. Task Demands and Resources Method Occupational Stress Model The occupational stress comes from the workers’ interactions with the working environment and the factors that led to such stress are called “psychological stressors” [4]. The typical stressors are excessive time pressure, poor prospects for promotion, lack of work supporting, etc. The occupational stress models are designed to analyze the stressors’ influences on workers’ performance. There are two important characteristics in the occupational stress studies: firstly, the occupational stress model is capable of identifying and analyzing the stressors in the working environment; secondly, the occupational stress model is dedicated to improve the human performance from both physical and psychological aspects. We believe that these two important characteristics offer a validate basis for us to incorporate the existing occupational stress models into the HRA. With reference to the occupational stress model [5], we propose a new approach to analysis human error in the next session. 664 Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 4th Annual International Conference on Management, Economics and Social Development (ICMESD 2018) Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research (AEBMR), volume 60