Urban Household Safety Inequalities: Structural and Latent Profile Analysis of Women’s Home Injury Risk

Home injuries remain a preventable yet persistent public health concern, particularly in urban households where socioeconomic and housing-related disparities influence exposure to domestic hazards. While socio-cognitive models commonly posit that safety knowledge affects behavior through attitudinal pathways, it is unclear whether this mechanism operates similarly in self-regulated household environments or whether safety risk is heterogeneously distributed across urban populations. This cross-sectional study of 1,012 urban women examined the relationship between home safety knowledge and safety performance using structural equation modelling (SEM) and tested the mediating role of a latent home safety assessment construct (HSAQ). Latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify distinct safety profiles based on cognitive indicators, behavioural performance, and accident history. SEM demonstrated a strong direct association between safety knowledge and safety performance (β = 0.865), whereas the hypothesized mediation through HSAQ was not supported. LCA identified four safety profiles characterized by progressively increasing accident prevalence; individuals in the highest-risk profile exhibited more than fourfold higher odds of reporting a home injury. These findings suggest that in urban domestic contexts, safety knowledge may function as a proximal behavioural determinant while accident vulnerability remains stratified across subgroups. Effective urban injury prevention may therefore require both universal knowledge-based interventions and targeted strategies addressing concentrated household risk.