Development of manga signboard to raise risk perception and safety attitudes for foreign workers.

—Extracting factors to raise visibility and comprehension—

Abstract

Recently, several workers from other countries have been engaging in work and practical training at Japanese work sites as Foreign Technical Interns. However, they sometimes meet with accidents at work sites because they do not understand Japanese precautional statements or warnings. In this study, we attempted to develop suitable colours and design of manga signboards to raise risk perception and safety attitudes of foreign technical interns at presented work sites. The study had 21 Indonesian, 20 Filipino, and 9 Vietnamese participants. We initially determined the common colours that foreigners associate with the words, “danger”, “accident”, and “safe”. Similar to the results of past studies, we found that red was connected to danger and green to safe. Next, the proper contents that remind individuals of danger and promote safety attitudes were examined. The participants tended to prefer a 4-series manga to a single illustration and presentation of accident examples to improvement examples and description of whole accident situations to parts of causes. Finally, regarding the flame of signboard, a diagonal stripe of black and yellow or red and yellow were found to attract the most attention. In future studies, we intend to study the effects of a manga signboard developed based on the results of this study.