Road Safety Campaign Research
International experiences with comprehensive and effective road safety campaigns
By José Ignacio Nazif and Gabriel Pérez
"Traffic accident reduction targets"
"Clarifying the difference between drivers’ education and road safety campaigns is the first step. The former aims to promote knowledge and understanding of traffic rules in order to improve drivers’ skills through formal training. By contrast, road safety campaigns seek to change dangerous behaviour by drivers by delivering persuasive information that appeals to the public’s reason and emotion. They aim to eliminate dangerous practices such as drinking and driving, speeding and non-use of seatbelts or helmets."
"Internal or self-control, i.e. the decision by drivers or environmental persuasion to change their own behaviour, without the need for the State to take coercive action."
"The interaction between the group and the objective helps to identify the reasons or motives behind potentially dangerous behaviour."
"The message should cover at least the following six aspects:
Public Information Campaigns as Policy Instruments
By Janet A. Weiss and Mary Tschirhart
"Public information campaigns (PICs) are one way that government officials deliberately attempt to shape public attitudes, values, or behavior in the hope of reaching some desirable social outcome. In other words, they are a tool or instrument of government action."
"We define information campaigns to be 'intended to generate specific outcomes or effects in a relatively large number of individuals, usually within a specified period of time, and through an organised set of communication activities.'"
"Compared to most other policy instruments, PICs are unusual in that they attempt to produce policy results without altering incentives or authority systems. They aim to work through ideas, information, or learning: the provision of information, the persuasiveness of argument, the heightening of attention, the arousal of emotion and values attached to policy, the framing of issues and solutions."
"Conditions that promote effectiveness: (1) to capture the attention of the right audience; (2) to deliver an understandable and credible message; (3) to deliver a message that influences the beliefs or understanding of the audience; and (4) to create social contexts that lead toward desired outcomes."
"The search for effective influence can be guided by psychological and sociological theories of social influence. Several models of the influence process have emerged in contemporary social science. We discuss four: providing new information, enhancing awareness and directing attention, triggering social or moral norms, and changing underlying values and preferences."
"National governments may find public information campaigns especially useful to shape public perception of problems by creating common under- standings and bridging differences in perspective among ethnic, regional, political, religious, or socioeconomic groups."
By LN Wundersitz, TP Hutchinson, and JE Woolley
"Road safety mass media campaigns play a valuable role in improving road safety by promoting safe behaviours. Given the costs associated with mass media advertising, it is important to understand what elements make a road safety mass media campaign effective and how future campaigns might be made more effective."
"There is general agreement that the most effective health-related mass media campaigns use well researched psychological theories of behaviour change to develop the campaign. Theory can provide a conceptual foundation for a campaign, assist in determining where campaign messages might focus, and accommodate evaluation of the campaign. A number of psychological theories that concentrate on predicting behaviour change, explaining social persuasion and the process of behaviour change are described. Despite the known benefits, few campaigns use a theoretical framework when designing campaigns."
"The Elaboration-Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) views persuasion as a means of forming or changing attitudes and there are two routes of persuasion by which attitude change may occur: central and peripheral. Motivation and ability are required for high elaboration in cognitive processing, that is, when individuals actively think about the campaign message, judge and evaluate it, and link the content to information already stored in their memory. Individuals might be motivated to process a message if it is perceived as relevant or they feel a high level of personal responsibility. Factors influencing an individual’s ability to process the message include prior knowledge of the message, comprehensibility of the message and whether there are any other distractions. Assuming that both motivation and ability are sufficient, the right informational cues need to be present."
"A campaign might be designed with a rational and/or an emotional appeal. Rational appeals provide objective information about the issue and emphasise deductive logic and cognitive processing (e.g. state the benefits of adopting a safe behaviour). Emotional appeals emphasise feelings and images and can be positive, negative or a combination of both. Appeals do not necessarily have to be either emotional or rational as they may contain elements of both."
"The difficulty of establishing the effectiveness of campaigns:Evans (1990) judged that of the various approaches to protecting road users, behaviour modification based on social norms has been the most important in the past and has the greatest potential for the future. Evans views the mass media as extremely important in establishing social norms: he accepts that it may be difficult to prove that any one advertising campaign had an effect, but believes that the cumulative effect over a period of years or decades is great. Indeed, concerning any sort of campaign to improve driving behaviour and prevent crashes, there is little that can be said with real confidence.
• The vast majority of research is non-experimental: for example, a change is made and behaviour before is compared with behaviour after. There are many different assumptions and methods available in analysing the data. They may, and frequently do, give different results.
• There is little “experimental” research, in the sense of the relevant units (such as people or vehicles or cities) being randomly allocated to treatment or control groups, with a before-after comparison being made in both groups."
Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new practices
By Tamara Hoekstra and Fred Wegman
"Unlike other modes of transport that have procedures, safeguards or fallbacks to limit both the occurrence and impact of human error, road traffic relies more heavily on its users to keep accidents from occurring. Given that humans are almost inadvertently prone to make mistakes and commit violations, human behaviour is of particular interest for most road safety professionals. That is where road safety campaigns come in. Together with other ‘behavioural’ measures (e.g., law enforcement, education, training, and even infrastructure to some extent) road safety campaigns are used as a means of influencing the public to behave more safely in traffic. Road safety campaigns can be defined as purposeful attempts to inform, persuade, and motivate a population (or sub-group of a population) to change its attitudes and/or behaviours to improve road safety, using organised communications involving specific media."
"One way to deal with some of the difficulties that come with evaluating the implementation of a campaign, is by pretesting (parts of) the method and of the campaign in a controlled environment. Pretesting can take on various forms depending on the specific characteristics of the intended campaign, but in general it refers to a small-scale study where the campaign concept or individual aspects of it are tested experimentally (i.e., comparing the behaviour or behavioural intentions of people who were presented with the campaign to the behaviour of people who have not been presented with the campaign; comparing the behaviour of people who have been presented with different concepts of the same campaign) to determine if the campaign strategy has any hope of influencing people's behaviour. If the chosen method of influencing behaviour proves successful in an experimental setting, this may be taken as an indication that it's worth trying on a larger scale. If the method does not prove to be effective experimentally, the results of the pretest may prove useful in figuring out how to improve the campaign at a point when it is still possible to make such an overhaul."
"Because reports on the evaluation results of road safety campaigns are few and far between, there is still little insight available into the effectiveness of campaigns in general, let alone which ingredients have proven to be successful, and which have not. This in turn makes it hard to determine if and how the practice and effectiveness of road safety campaigns might be improved, thereby depriving the organisations behind road safety campaigns of the opportunity to learn from their successes and their mistakes and make a bigger difference. Evaluations of road safety campaigns may, for example, shed some light on the more controversial of current practices (such as the use of fear appeals) and help determine if and when these practices are really effective."
"The effectiveness of road safety advertising aimed both at fatigue and drink driving, for example, was most determined by whether or not suitable alternatives were provided (i.e., having a designated driver, and alternative forms of transpor- tation). However, providing people with alternatives for their behaviour is not effective in influencing all traffic related behaviours. In the case of speeding behaviours, for example, such alternative behaviours are not readily available. That is, it is not really possible to suggest alternative ways to deal with the dangers that speeding presents, other than to just not engage in this particular behaviour. It is worth noting that speeding in general is a notoriously difficult behaviour to influence through campaigning."
Meta-analysis of the effect of road safety campaigns on accidents
By Ross Owen Phillips, Pål Ulleberg, and Truls Vaa
"For example, persuasion is often attempted rationally, through the presentation of facts or figures, but research shows that the effect can be larger if an emotional message is used (Elliot, 1993; Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). The emotion invoked in the target audience can be negative, e.g. shock or fear appeals (Lewis et al., 2008), or positive, e.g. humour appeals (Weinberger and Gulas, 1992). Research on fear appeals suggests that their effects are weak, limited by defensive responses and dependent on personal relevance (Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). Research on humour appeals is more limited, with some studies finding weakly positive effects and others finding neutral effects (Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). Faced by the array of strategies used by previous campaigns and ambiguous recommendations from researchers it is difficult for practitioners to conclude anything about the emotional content their message should have (see e.g. SWOV, 2008; Lewis et al., 2007; Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). The situation is typical of other aspects of campaign content. For instance, using either factual or emotional persuasion, many campaigns aim to highlight the risks associated with certain road user behaviour, though again it is not clear whether it is advantageous to do so."
"If a campaign message is persuasive, it will only be effective in terms of behavioural change and accident reduction if it reaches the target audience. In designing a campaign, it is thus important to consider effective ways to deliver the message. Again, however, there is little guidance on which method(s) is best. Delivery via mass media channels might be expected to increase the effective- ness of the campaign on the basis of the greater exposure achieved. However, the effectiveness of mass media channels alone has been questioned in the fields of both traffic safety (see e.g. Elliot, 1993; Vaa et al., 2004) and health promotion (Wilde, 1993; Donnerstein and Linz, 1995; Snyder, 2001), partly on the grounds that the audience is likely to be exposed to mass media at a time and place that is far removed from the context in which the targeted road user behaviour occurs. In addition, exposure in and of itself is not sufficient to guarantee that the target will attend to and elaborate the message, a process thought to increase the likelihood that they will subsequently change their behaviour (see e.g. Petty et al., 2009), and one which is best achieved using interpersonal communication rather than mass media."
"What may be of more practical use are our findings that personal communication and roadside delivery of a message are associated with greater reductions in accidents."
"A systematic summary of 119 individual road safety campaign effects suggests that road safety campaigns have an overall significant accident-reducing effect of 9%."
An examination of message-relevant affect in road safety messages: Should road safety advertisements aim to make us feel good or bad?
By I. Lewis, B. Watson, and K.M. White
"Much of the more recent evidence on the role of emotion (affect) in attitude change has been based upon the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). As a multi-process theory of persuasion this framework better captures the complexity of the many roles of affect (Petty et al., 2001). The ELM proposes that attitude change via persuasion occurs through one of two processing routes: central or peripheral (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The processing enacted depends upon the extent of elaboration which ranges from limited thinking to extensive consideration of message arguments. The extent of elaboration is mediated by the individual’s level of motivation and/or ability (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty & Wegener, 1999). When motivation/ability levels are high, elaboration is also high and the message is processed centrally. Conversely, when motivation/ability levels are low, elaboration is also low and the message is believed to be processed peripherally whereby individuals are persuaded by some peripheral cue(s) (e.g., the number, as opposed to the quality, of arguments pre- sented; Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). Also, central processing is believed to produce attitudes that are more enduring than peripheral processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty, Haugtvedt, & Smith, 1995)."
"Although there is emerging empirical evidence supporting the potential use of positive emotion in appeals in road safety, it is important to note that compared with the substantial body of empirical and theoretical evidence that has amassed in relation to negative message-relevant affect in terms of fear-based messages, there is a relative paucity in theoretical explanations of the manner in which positive message-relevant affect influences persuasion (Nabi, 2002). Moreover, much of what is currently known about positive affect and persuasion is based upon studies of positive message-irrelevant affect (i.e., mood) (Petty et al., 1993). Of note however, much of this evidence has shown that positive mood may have advantageous effects for persua- sion (Petty et al., 1993). Thus, the important aspect to be noted from this evidence is that experiencing a positive feeling state (albeit a diffused, long-lasting state rather than transient affective response) can evidence improved persuasive effects."
By José Ignacio Nazif and Gabriel Pérez
"Traffic accident reduction targets"
"Clarifying the difference between drivers’ education and road safety campaigns is the first step. The former aims to promote knowledge and understanding of traffic rules in order to improve drivers’ skills through formal training. By contrast, road safety campaigns seek to change dangerous behaviour by drivers by delivering persuasive information that appeals to the public’s reason and emotion. They aim to eliminate dangerous practices such as drinking and driving, speeding and non-use of seatbelts or helmets."
"Internal or self-control, i.e. the decision by drivers or environmental persuasion to change their own behaviour, without the need for the State to take coercive action."
"The interaction between the group and the objective helps to identify the reasons or motives behind potentially dangerous behaviour."
"The message should cover at least the following six aspects:
1. Convince the target group that the threat is severe and that has very serious consequences, for example: “Speeding is dangerous and has deadly consequences.”
2. Convince the target group that the threat applies to them, i.e. that it could happen to them or someone close to them.
3. Consider the possible “benefits” that the dangerous behaviour offers the target group in order to create arguments to discourage it.
4. Offer a true alternative to dangerous behaviour, in order to offer the target group a way to increase their sense of self-control.
5. Consider the cost of safe behaviour, and, wherever possible, reduce it or make it equal to dangerous behaviour.
6. Provide evidence of an effective response to ensure that people believe in its effectiveness and will maintain it over time."
2. Convince the target group that the threat applies to them, i.e. that it could happen to them or someone close to them.
3. Consider the possible “benefits” that the dangerous behaviour offers the target group in order to create arguments to discourage it.
4. Offer a true alternative to dangerous behaviour, in order to offer the target group a way to increase their sense of self-control.
5. Consider the cost of safe behaviour, and, wherever possible, reduce it or make it equal to dangerous behaviour.
6. Provide evidence of an effective response to ensure that people believe in its effectiveness and will maintain it over time."
Public Information Campaigns as Policy Instruments
By Janet A. Weiss and Mary Tschirhart
"Public information campaigns (PICs) are one way that government officials deliberately attempt to shape public attitudes, values, or behavior in the hope of reaching some desirable social outcome. In other words, they are a tool or instrument of government action."
"We define information campaigns to be 'intended to generate specific outcomes or effects in a relatively large number of individuals, usually within a specified period of time, and through an organised set of communication activities.'"
"Compared to most other policy instruments, PICs are unusual in that they attempt to produce policy results without altering incentives or authority systems. They aim to work through ideas, information, or learning: the provision of information, the persuasiveness of argument, the heightening of attention, the arousal of emotion and values attached to policy, the framing of issues and solutions."
"Conditions that promote effectiveness: (1) to capture the attention of the right audience; (2) to deliver an understandable and credible message; (3) to deliver a message that influences the beliefs or understanding of the audience; and (4) to create social contexts that lead toward desired outcomes."
"The search for effective influence can be guided by psychological and sociological theories of social influence. Several models of the influence process have emerged in contemporary social science. We discuss four: providing new information, enhancing awareness and directing attention, triggering social or moral norms, and changing underlying values and preferences."
"National governments may find public information campaigns especially useful to shape public perception of problems by creating common under- standings and bridging differences in perspective among ethnic, regional, political, religious, or socioeconomic groups."
A theoretical approach to assess road safety campaigns
By Adamos et al
"Campaigns can be defined in different ways and building on existing descriptions of road safety campaigns (Rice & Atikin, 2000) the CAST consortium adopted a new, general definition:
'Purposeful attempts to inform, persuade, and motivate a population (or sub-group of a population) to change its attitudes and/or behaviours to improve road safety, using organised communications involving special media channels within a given time period, often supplemented by other safety-promoting activities (enforcement, education, legislation, enhancing personal commitment, rewards, etc.).' (see Delhomme et al., 2009).
In this definition three types of campaigns are distinguished: mass media campaigns (to reach a larger audience), face-to-face campaigns (personal communication) and education (safety trainings)."
"A suggestion from subgroup analyses that campaigns using some form of personal communication with the target audience have somewhat improved effects was consolidated by our meta-regression analyses. The use of a personal element or the use of other people as channels for the delivery of the campaign message implies that an increased level of intimacy with the target could be important, possibly because it increases the likelihood that the target attends to and processes the campaign message."
"That roadside delivery is also positively associated with beneficial campaign effects suggests that delivery of the message to drivers at a place that is in terms of space and time proximal to the target behaviour is beneficial in terms of campaign effect. In other words, achieving immediacy in the delivery of a campaign message might be important. In terms of accident counts, short campaign duration is also bene cial according to multivariate analyses, something which also implies a sense of immediacy. In shorter, more intense campaigns, the message may be more likely to be received at a time that is proximal to carrying out of the target behaviour."
Best practice in road safety mass media campaigns: A literature reviewBy Adamos et al
"Campaigns can be defined in different ways and building on existing descriptions of road safety campaigns (Rice & Atikin, 2000) the CAST consortium adopted a new, general definition:
'Purposeful attempts to inform, persuade, and motivate a population (or sub-group of a population) to change its attitudes and/or behaviours to improve road safety, using organised communications involving special media channels within a given time period, often supplemented by other safety-promoting activities (enforcement, education, legislation, enhancing personal commitment, rewards, etc.).' (see Delhomme et al., 2009).
In this definition three types of campaigns are distinguished: mass media campaigns (to reach a larger audience), face-to-face campaigns (personal communication) and education (safety trainings)."
"A suggestion from subgroup analyses that campaigns using some form of personal communication with the target audience have somewhat improved effects was consolidated by our meta-regression analyses. The use of a personal element or the use of other people as channels for the delivery of the campaign message implies that an increased level of intimacy with the target could be important, possibly because it increases the likelihood that the target attends to and processes the campaign message."
"That roadside delivery is also positively associated with beneficial campaign effects suggests that delivery of the message to drivers at a place that is in terms of space and time proximal to the target behaviour is beneficial in terms of campaign effect. In other words, achieving immediacy in the delivery of a campaign message might be important. In terms of accident counts, short campaign duration is also bene cial according to multivariate analyses, something which also implies a sense of immediacy. In shorter, more intense campaigns, the message may be more likely to be received at a time that is proximal to carrying out of the target behaviour."
By LN Wundersitz, TP Hutchinson, and JE Woolley
"Road safety mass media campaigns play a valuable role in improving road safety by promoting safe behaviours. Given the costs associated with mass media advertising, it is important to understand what elements make a road safety mass media campaign effective and how future campaigns might be made more effective."
"There is general agreement that the most effective health-related mass media campaigns use well researched psychological theories of behaviour change to develop the campaign. Theory can provide a conceptual foundation for a campaign, assist in determining where campaign messages might focus, and accommodate evaluation of the campaign. A number of psychological theories that concentrate on predicting behaviour change, explaining social persuasion and the process of behaviour change are described. Despite the known benefits, few campaigns use a theoretical framework when designing campaigns."
"The Elaboration-Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) views persuasion as a means of forming or changing attitudes and there are two routes of persuasion by which attitude change may occur: central and peripheral. Motivation and ability are required for high elaboration in cognitive processing, that is, when individuals actively think about the campaign message, judge and evaluate it, and link the content to information already stored in their memory. Individuals might be motivated to process a message if it is perceived as relevant or they feel a high level of personal responsibility. Factors influencing an individual’s ability to process the message include prior knowledge of the message, comprehensibility of the message and whether there are any other distractions. Assuming that both motivation and ability are sufficient, the right informational cues need to be present."
"A campaign might be designed with a rational and/or an emotional appeal. Rational appeals provide objective information about the issue and emphasise deductive logic and cognitive processing (e.g. state the benefits of adopting a safe behaviour). Emotional appeals emphasise feelings and images and can be positive, negative or a combination of both. Appeals do not necessarily have to be either emotional or rational as they may contain elements of both."
"The difficulty of establishing the effectiveness of campaigns:Evans (1990) judged that of the various approaches to protecting road users, behaviour modification based on social norms has been the most important in the past and has the greatest potential for the future. Evans views the mass media as extremely important in establishing social norms: he accepts that it may be difficult to prove that any one advertising campaign had an effect, but believes that the cumulative effect over a period of years or decades is great. Indeed, concerning any sort of campaign to improve driving behaviour and prevent crashes, there is little that can be said with real confidence.
• The vast majority of research is non-experimental: for example, a change is made and behaviour before is compared with behaviour after. There are many different assumptions and methods available in analysing the data. They may, and frequently do, give different results.
• There is little “experimental” research, in the sense of the relevant units (such as people or vehicles or cities) being randomly allocated to treatment or control groups, with a before-after comparison being made in both groups."
Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new practices
By Tamara Hoekstra and Fred Wegman
"Unlike other modes of transport that have procedures, safeguards or fallbacks to limit both the occurrence and impact of human error, road traffic relies more heavily on its users to keep accidents from occurring. Given that humans are almost inadvertently prone to make mistakes and commit violations, human behaviour is of particular interest for most road safety professionals. That is where road safety campaigns come in. Together with other ‘behavioural’ measures (e.g., law enforcement, education, training, and even infrastructure to some extent) road safety campaigns are used as a means of influencing the public to behave more safely in traffic. Road safety campaigns can be defined as purposeful attempts to inform, persuade, and motivate a population (or sub-group of a population) to change its attitudes and/or behaviours to improve road safety, using organised communications involving specific media."
"One way to deal with some of the difficulties that come with evaluating the implementation of a campaign, is by pretesting (parts of) the method and of the campaign in a controlled environment. Pretesting can take on various forms depending on the specific characteristics of the intended campaign, but in general it refers to a small-scale study where the campaign concept or individual aspects of it are tested experimentally (i.e., comparing the behaviour or behavioural intentions of people who were presented with the campaign to the behaviour of people who have not been presented with the campaign; comparing the behaviour of people who have been presented with different concepts of the same campaign) to determine if the campaign strategy has any hope of influencing people's behaviour. If the chosen method of influencing behaviour proves successful in an experimental setting, this may be taken as an indication that it's worth trying on a larger scale. If the method does not prove to be effective experimentally, the results of the pretest may prove useful in figuring out how to improve the campaign at a point when it is still possible to make such an overhaul."
"Because reports on the evaluation results of road safety campaigns are few and far between, there is still little insight available into the effectiveness of campaigns in general, let alone which ingredients have proven to be successful, and which have not. This in turn makes it hard to determine if and how the practice and effectiveness of road safety campaigns might be improved, thereby depriving the organisations behind road safety campaigns of the opportunity to learn from their successes and their mistakes and make a bigger difference. Evaluations of road safety campaigns may, for example, shed some light on the more controversial of current practices (such as the use of fear appeals) and help determine if and when these practices are really effective."
"The effectiveness of road safety advertising aimed both at fatigue and drink driving, for example, was most determined by whether or not suitable alternatives were provided (i.e., having a designated driver, and alternative forms of transpor- tation). However, providing people with alternatives for their behaviour is not effective in influencing all traffic related behaviours. In the case of speeding behaviours, for example, such alternative behaviours are not readily available. That is, it is not really possible to suggest alternative ways to deal with the dangers that speeding presents, other than to just not engage in this particular behaviour. It is worth noting that speeding in general is a notoriously difficult behaviour to influence through campaigning."
"For road safety campaigns in general, this implies that the nature of the behaviour determines whether or not a certain tactic will be effective, something which can be determined by pretesting a campaign. For speeding behaviours in particular, this means that different means should be sought to try and influence this behaviour for the better. Since it has been suggested that the lack of effect garnered by enforcement is due to the belief that speeding is socially acceptable, that detection and the subsequent penalties can be easily avoided and that the imposed fines represent nothing but governmental greed, the first step may be to try and tackle these beliefs."
"Judging by the number of road safety campaigns that make use of fear appeals, there is a firm belief in the ability to “scare people straight”. The idea is that when fear is aroused, people will become more motivated to accept the message and recommendations presented in a campaign. Implicitly, the way people sometimes react to these types of campaigns (shock, horror, or even tears) is taken as a sign that the message got through to people... although fear can motivate people, it can also have the opposite effect. It may in fact lead people to employ so-called defensive responses. Such responses may take many forms, for example with people discounting the veracity of the claims in the campaign, by them saying that the campaign bears no personal relevance to oneself, or even by avoiding exposure to the campaign altogether."
"One must limit the possibility that people will respond defensively to the campaign, meaning that the fear the campaign evokes should not be so overwhelming that people feel they can do nothing to prevent it. One possible way to do this is by supplying the audience with specific actions that can be taken as preventive measures. It is also important that this action is not only something people think they will be able to do, but that they feel is both credible and suitable to be considered a preventive measure. Furthermore, the audience should be made to feel that the problem is relevant to them. Finally, there are the cultural backdrop and the characteristics of the target audience to consider. Other than the age and gender of the prospective audience, this might also mean focusing on consequences that the target audience will care about. Young people, for example, may be far more impressed by the repercussions of a road accident on their looks or on their social standing than on their general health and longevity."
"Strategy often seems to veer right into presenting people with information on either or both the ramifications of the undesirable behaviour and the profits of the correct behaviour."
"Logically, that would mean that telling people that certain behaviours are dangerous, should result in those people choosing to do the sensible thing and stop taking such unnecessary risks. People are rational creatures, after all. Or are they?
Evidence that human decision making is decidedly not always the result of rational thought, is bountiful. On the contrary, many of our actions are the result of our habits, feelings, biases, circumstances, and so on and so forth. In fact, many behaviours are so much the result of such things that conscious rational thought does not play the significant role that many seem to attribute to it. As such, many behaviours have come to be considered as automatic: behaviour that is performed unintentionally and without conscious knowledge and control. One way to overcome this is to break a habit by either timing your message to be delivered at the precise moment when people are prone to revaluate their habits (e.g., change of job or address, having children, etc.) or by aiming the intervention at stopping bad habits from forming."
Evidence that human decision making is decidedly not always the result of rational thought, is bountiful. On the contrary, many of our actions are the result of our habits, feelings, biases, circumstances, and so on and so forth. In fact, many behaviours are so much the result of such things that conscious rational thought does not play the significant role that many seem to attribute to it. As such, many behaviours have come to be considered as automatic: behaviour that is performed unintentionally and without conscious knowledge and control. One way to overcome this is to break a habit by either timing your message to be delivered at the precise moment when people are prone to revaluate their habits (e.g., change of job or address, having children, etc.) or by aiming the intervention at stopping bad habits from forming."
"In much the same way, the same can be accomplished by presenting people with an example of the way we would like them to act rather than showing them how they should not. This is because we humans have a very strong tendency to mimic the behaviours we see in others. For example, we 'whisper to someone who is whispering, we start to speak much louder when others do so'. Leading by the right rather than the wrong example can therefore have the desired effect simply because we just cannot help mimicking people. Furthermore, by demonstrating the desired behaviour you are also playing on another important human tendency: to conform. People are less prone to exhibit behaviour that other people see as inappropriate. This is another good reason to emphasise that the desired behaviour is something everybody does and is perceived by the most people as normal and appropriate."
"Many campaigns aimed at changing unwanted behaviour, how- ever, feature people portraying the very behaviour that the campaign is supposed to discourage. Often, this is meant to raise awareness of a certain problem, or to hold up a “mirror” for the audience to look into. This is based on the contention that if people see how stupid, ugly, silly, etc., it looks when other people act a certain way, hopefully in the future they will think twice before acting like that themselves. However, 'holding up a mirror' like that suggests that multiple people will be able to recognise themselves in the reflection. This, then, suggests that the behaviour portrayed is something that a lot of people already do, and therefore may act to normalise the very behaviour that it attempts to discourage. These types of campaigns may thus be ineffectual or even inadvertently enforce the unwanted behaviour. This once again underlines the importance not only of providing the target audience with the right example, but to carefully pretest these example to see if people see them the way they are meant to be seen."
"Another way to subtly move people in the direction you want them to take, is by using the implication of the prospect theory. This influential theory describes how differently people react to information based on whether they are framed as potential losses or potential gains. To illustrate this difference, consider having to make a choice of whether or not to undergo a medical procedure. If a doctor told his patient that 'out of a hundred patients, 90% will still be alive five years after the operation', that patient will probably be inclined to go through with it. If, however, the doctor stated that 'out of a hundred patients, 10% will die within five years after the operation', the patient will probably be a lot more reluctant to undergo what is essentially the same procedure.
Another example of the above principle at work comes from the research of Meyerowitz and Chaiken, who looked into ways to get more women to check for changes in their breast tissues in order to increase the likelihood of early detection of breast cancer. They did this by spreading several versions of the same brochure on this subject, one describing this procedure in terms of the potential gains ('by checking your breast tissue regularly, you will be more familiar with their texture which will make it easier to detect any eventual changes'), potential losses ('by not checking your breast tissue regularly, you will be less familiar with their texture which will make it harder to detect any eventual changes') or without any mention of either the potential losses or gains. In this particular case, it turned out that the brochure that was framed in terms of losses yielded the biggest results: 57% of the women that had received this version had started to check their breast regularly in contrast to either the gain frame or neutral brochure that had only moved about 38% to do so."
Another example of the above principle at work comes from the research of Meyerowitz and Chaiken, who looked into ways to get more women to check for changes in their breast tissues in order to increase the likelihood of early detection of breast cancer. They did this by spreading several versions of the same brochure on this subject, one describing this procedure in terms of the potential gains ('by checking your breast tissue regularly, you will be more familiar with their texture which will make it easier to detect any eventual changes'), potential losses ('by not checking your breast tissue regularly, you will be less familiar with their texture which will make it harder to detect any eventual changes') or without any mention of either the potential losses or gains. In this particular case, it turned out that the brochure that was framed in terms of losses yielded the biggest results: 57% of the women that had received this version had started to check their breast regularly in contrast to either the gain frame or neutral brochure that had only moved about 38% to do so."
Meta-analysis of the effect of road safety campaigns on accidents
By Ross Owen Phillips, Pål Ulleberg, and Truls Vaa
"For example, persuasion is often attempted rationally, through the presentation of facts or figures, but research shows that the effect can be larger if an emotional message is used (Elliot, 1993; Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). The emotion invoked in the target audience can be negative, e.g. shock or fear appeals (Lewis et al., 2008), or positive, e.g. humour appeals (Weinberger and Gulas, 1992). Research on fear appeals suggests that their effects are weak, limited by defensive responses and dependent on personal relevance (Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). Research on humour appeals is more limited, with some studies finding weakly positive effects and others finding neutral effects (Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). Faced by the array of strategies used by previous campaigns and ambiguous recommendations from researchers it is difficult for practitioners to conclude anything about the emotional content their message should have (see e.g. SWOV, 2008; Lewis et al., 2007; Ulleberg and Vaa, 2009). The situation is typical of other aspects of campaign content. For instance, using either factual or emotional persuasion, many campaigns aim to highlight the risks associated with certain road user behaviour, though again it is not clear whether it is advantageous to do so."
"If a campaign message is persuasive, it will only be effective in terms of behavioural change and accident reduction if it reaches the target audience. In designing a campaign, it is thus important to consider effective ways to deliver the message. Again, however, there is little guidance on which method(s) is best. Delivery via mass media channels might be expected to increase the effective- ness of the campaign on the basis of the greater exposure achieved. However, the effectiveness of mass media channels alone has been questioned in the fields of both traffic safety (see e.g. Elliot, 1993; Vaa et al., 2004) and health promotion (Wilde, 1993; Donnerstein and Linz, 1995; Snyder, 2001), partly on the grounds that the audience is likely to be exposed to mass media at a time and place that is far removed from the context in which the targeted road user behaviour occurs. In addition, exposure in and of itself is not sufficient to guarantee that the target will attend to and elaborate the message, a process thought to increase the likelihood that they will subsequently change their behaviour (see e.g. Petty et al., 2009), and one which is best achieved using interpersonal communication rather than mass media."
"A systematic summary of 119 individual road safety campaign effects suggests that road safety campaigns have an overall significant accident-reducing effect of 9%."
A review of mass media campaigns in road safety
By Amanda Delaney, Bella Lough, Michelle Whelan, and Max Cameron
"Delhomme (1999) reviewed only those evaluations of mass media campaigns that examined the impact of campaigns on crashes with themes related to driver behaviour, safety devices within a vehicle, or the vehicle itself. It was estimated that on average a road safety mass media campaign will result in an 8.5 percent reduction in crashes during the operation of the campaign. Following campaign completion, the reduction in crashes is expected to increase on average to 14.8 percent."
"Campaigns with a persuasive orientation and those that use emotional rather than rational appeals tend to have a greater effect on the relevant measure of effect. In contrast, information based and educative campaigns have been associated with less effective campaigns."
"There is a divide in the literature as to whether mass media campaigns change behaviour and then attitudes, or whether an individual’s attitude changes and then their behaviour."
"Message characteristics also play an important role in the success of the campaign, and include both content and style. Research suggests that related messages need to include a consistent slogan in order to link the messages together, and optimise the audience impact. New information can also increase the campaign effect size. Messages also need to be credible and realistic. The use of expert or target group relevant group models is also recommended. Research has also shown that a serious approach is more appropriate than a humourous approach."
By Amanda Delaney, Bella Lough, Michelle Whelan, and Max Cameron
"Delhomme (1999) reviewed only those evaluations of mass media campaigns that examined the impact of campaigns on crashes with themes related to driver behaviour, safety devices within a vehicle, or the vehicle itself. It was estimated that on average a road safety mass media campaign will result in an 8.5 percent reduction in crashes during the operation of the campaign. Following campaign completion, the reduction in crashes is expected to increase on average to 14.8 percent."
"Campaigns with a persuasive orientation and those that use emotional rather than rational appeals tend to have a greater effect on the relevant measure of effect. In contrast, information based and educative campaigns have been associated with less effective campaigns."
"There is a divide in the literature as to whether mass media campaigns change behaviour and then attitudes, or whether an individual’s attitude changes and then their behaviour."
"Message characteristics also play an important role in the success of the campaign, and include both content and style. Research suggests that related messages need to include a consistent slogan in order to link the messages together, and optimise the audience impact. New information can also increase the campaign effect size. Messages also need to be credible and realistic. The use of expert or target group relevant group models is also recommended. Research has also shown that a serious approach is more appropriate than a humourous approach."
An examination of message-relevant affect in road safety messages: Should road safety advertisements aim to make us feel good or bad?
By I. Lewis, B. Watson, and K.M. White
"Much of the more recent evidence on the role of emotion (affect) in attitude change has been based upon the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). As a multi-process theory of persuasion this framework better captures the complexity of the many roles of affect (Petty et al., 2001). The ELM proposes that attitude change via persuasion occurs through one of two processing routes: central or peripheral (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The processing enacted depends upon the extent of elaboration which ranges from limited thinking to extensive consideration of message arguments. The extent of elaboration is mediated by the individual’s level of motivation and/or ability (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty & Wegener, 1999). When motivation/ability levels are high, elaboration is also high and the message is processed centrally. Conversely, when motivation/ability levels are low, elaboration is also low and the message is believed to be processed peripherally whereby individuals are persuaded by some peripheral cue(s) (e.g., the number, as opposed to the quality, of arguments pre- sented; Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). Also, central processing is believed to produce attitudes that are more enduring than peripheral processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty, Haugtvedt, & Smith, 1995)."
"Although there is emerging empirical evidence supporting the potential use of positive emotion in appeals in road safety, it is important to note that compared with the substantial body of empirical and theoretical evidence that has amassed in relation to negative message-relevant affect in terms of fear-based messages, there is a relative paucity in theoretical explanations of the manner in which positive message-relevant affect influences persuasion (Nabi, 2002). Moreover, much of what is currently known about positive affect and persuasion is based upon studies of positive message-irrelevant affect (i.e., mood) (Petty et al., 1993). Of note however, much of this evidence has shown that positive mood may have advantageous effects for persua- sion (Petty et al., 1993). Thus, the important aspect to be noted from this evidence is that experiencing a positive feeling state (albeit a diffused, long-lasting state rather than transient affective response) can evidence improved persuasive effects."