PONE-D-21-18005Divergent Effects of Transformational Leadership on Safety Compliance: A Dual-Path Moderated Mediation ModelPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. It is good to include workplace injuries in Chinese context and workplace injuries in Chinese construction in the introduction part.

2. Consistency is important. Safety performance/safety behavior and safety compliance cannot be used interchangeably (see Neal et al., 2000; https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/1076-8998.5.3.347).

3. The literature provided supports for the relationship between transformational leadership and safety performance/safety behaviors. The literature should focus on the relationship between transformational leadership and safety compliance. This is important because safety performance/behavior has two dimensions: (1) safety compliance and (2) safety involvement (see Neal et al., 2000; https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/1076-8998.5.3.347).

4. Should Authors should include findings on safety compliance, not safety performance to support the research problem.

5. Abbreviation Incorrect abbreviation: self-regulatory focus (SRF) theory instead of SFR.

6. Lines 119-127: does unsafe behavior mean less or no safety compliance by employees? Needs more literature to support.

7. Previous literature has found a direct relationship between transformational leadership and safety compliance. Why is this relationship not considered in this study?

The following are examples of the relationship between transformational leadership and safety compliance:

https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0002023 https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2020.1716551 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2013.07.004

8. Please explain the approach to data analysis before the Results section

9. Average variance extraction (AVE) and factor loadings are not reported. These tests are important to measure a construct - convergent validity.

10. Discriminant validity should be tested to ensure the distinct between constructs (AVE > r2).

11. It is good to report the R2 to validate the gaps and conflicting results in safety performance research, especially on safety compliance. The report on R2 could support for theoretical and practical contributions section.

12. A proofreading is strongly recommended to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: This study investigates the relationship between transformational leadership and safety performance. The study attempts to provide empirical understating on the divergent influence of transformational leadership on safety compliance. Very interesting study!

Overall, the design enables for causal inferences, statistics, analyses are appropriate/ sufficient, and conclusions are evidence-based.

There are several improvement areas that should be addressed:

The specific items for all the measures used should be included as-is (e.g., as Supplemental Information). For instance, it is unclear which three items were discarded in the ‘Safety risk tolerance’ measures. The raw data provided do not include labels of the individual questions.

The English and Chinese versions should be made available. In addition, the procedure of standard translation-back-translation should be elaborated further to offer explicit justification of the validity of translated measures.

The authors use 20 items from MLQ as a measure of transformational leadership. They reference an old 1999 study as a justification of this decision. Whilst MLQ is widely used, there is a recent criticism on the validity of its constructs (e.g., “Measuring leadership an assessment of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire”, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254329)

Why did the authors not randomize the items/ measures to minimize potential order effects (e.g., two or three versions of the same items/ measures, but in different order)?

It is currently not crystal clear what the authors mean that they controlled for the demographical information variables (see line 226). I could just assume that that they refer to controlling for demographical variables within the proposed research method (as seen in line 258). If this is what they mean, then this should be clarified earlier.

The term ‘safety performance’ should be clarified upfront in the introduction (currently it is explained in line 82 but not in the intro).

There was an in-text citation in line 25 that is not available in the reference list.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Divergent Effects of Transformational Leadership on Safety Compliance: A Dual-Path Moderated Mediation Model

PONE-D-21-18005R1

Dear Dr. Zheng,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Abroon Qazi, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The authors have adequately addressed all comments.

Just two small notes:

For Response 2, I would include “fluency” when describing the level of English.

For Response 2, I would clarify about “English graduate” –Does it mean someone who is from the United Kingdom or someone who proficient in English?

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No