Despite very intense research, lots of efforts are focused on discovering what safety culture really is and what key elements make up a safety culture. However, there still remains very little consensus with regard to selection of most of the elements and no definitive set of elements exists. This paper aims to develop a conceptual model of selecting the key elements of safety culture and to demonstrate the application of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for the selection of key elements for safety culture. The concept of safety culture, review on elements of safety culture, methods of elements selection and AHP are discussed in the second part. Method for selection of elements from literature based criteria of a safety culture and method of AHP-based decision model is discussed in the third part. An AHP-based decision-making matrix for a set of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) criteria analysis of the key elements is presented at the end of the paper. © IEOM Society International. © IEOM Society International.