Safety Rule Breaking in Disasters: A Qualitative Analysis on Disaster Volunteers

Volunteers are considerable human source in disasters. The stress, pressure and difficult conditions of disasters can lead to violations of safety rules by employees, especially young people. Safety violations may lead to stoppage or failure of the activities. This research focus on the young volunteers’ behaviours on violating safety rules in disasters. Based on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews from individuals working in the regions affected by the 6 February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake. The research sample consisted of 17 young disaster volunteers between the ages of 18-26 who were eligible for criterion sampling. The data were analysed thematically, theory-oriented and deductively. As a result of the thematic analysis, 3 themes, namely work demands, work resources and violation of safety rules, and 16 categories under these themes were discovered. Results implies that young volunteers use work resources against intense work demands. Although studies in the field of organisational safety show that job resources increase safe behaviour, it can be said that job resources of volunteers in disasters increase breaking of safety rules. © 2025, Ankara University. All rights reserved.