Insights from the broken window effect for safety management

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In 1969, Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University in the United States, conducted an experiment. He found two identical cars, parking one in a middle-class neighborhood in Palo Alto, California, and the other in the relatively chaotic Bronx district of New York. The one parked in the Bronx – he removed its license plate and opened the roof, and it was stolen that very day. As for the one in Palo Alto, no one paid any attention to it for a week either. Later, Sinbad used a hammer to break a big hole in the car’s window. As a result, just a few hours later, it was gone. Based on this experiment, political scientist James Wilson and criminologist George Kelling proposed the \"broken window theory,\" which holds that if someone breaks the window glass of a building and that window is not repaired in a timely manner, others may be encouraged by this act to break more windows, eventually leading to the destruction of the entire building. The broken window effect offers the following insights for our safety management: (1) If people’s unsafe behaviors are not stopped and addressed in a timely manner, others will continue to imitate them, thereby triggering the broken window effect. (2) The broken window effect is a collective behavior triggered by individual behavior. Preventing collective unsafe behaviors triggered by the \"escalation\" of individual bad behaviors is a key focus of our daily personnel safety management. (3) Safety first, prevention foremost. The best way to ensure security management is to prevent the occurrence of a \"broken window\" scenario. But in the event of a \"broken window,\" immediate action must be taken to fix it right away, just as one would mend a damaged fence. Eliminating the \"broken window effect\" is an effective means of addressing potential hazards, controlling the safety situation, and preventing safety accidents.