Safety Perception as a Sociotechnical Network

Improving passenger safety through implementing human cognitive process knowledge into passenger safety regulations is a focus of current discussion in passenger ship safety. Perception plays important role in human cognitive process and ultimately guides people behaviour. This study investigates how passengers’ perceive safety on board cruise ship and traces the connections between passengers’ safety perception and ship safety regulations. Article takes a novel approach to safety research and employs network analysis to illustrate the connectivity of the two parties and investigates sociotechnical environment of passenger ship safety. The research reveals that sound and handrails can play a central role in passengers’ safety perception, and although many regulations are applied to these typical features of passenger ships, passengers understand them from a different perspective. It is therefore suggested that passenger ship safety design must begin to consider passenger perceptions to avoid their fault interpretations of the environmental elements.