Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new practices

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Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new
practices
Article in IATSS Research · March 2011
DOI: 10.1016/j.iatssr.2011.01.003
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Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new practices
Tamara Hoekstra a
, Fred Wegman a,b,⁎
a SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, The Netherlands
b Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 1 September 2010
Received in revised form 22 November 2010
Accepted 22 November 2010
Keywords:
Road safety campaigns
Evaluation
Fear appeals
Automaticity
Priming
Framing
The evaluation of campaigns aimed at improving road safety is still the exception rather than the rule. Because
of this, ineffective campaigns and campaign techniques are allowed to continue to be utilised without
question, while new methods of behaviour modification are often ignored. Therefore, the necessity and
advantages of formally evaluating road safety campaign efforts are discussed. This article also describes the
pros and cons of some of the more common campaign strategies and introduces a number of new methods
that show a great deal of promise for the purpose of road safety campaigns. In order to infuse the field of road
safety campaigning with such new insights into road user behaviour and behavioural modification, one
should look beyond the confines of road safety campaign standards and learn from the knowledge gained in
other disciplines such as economics and social psychology. These new insights are discussed in terms of their
implications for the future of road safety campaigns.
© 2011 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Road safety and road safety campaigns
Road traffic today is inherently dangerous. In fact, in contrast to
other modes of transport such as railways and air traffic, the road
traffic system was not designed with safety as a jumping-off point [1].
Consequently, in road traffic it is us humans who make the difference
between hazard and safety, with little keeping us from harm should we
make a mistake. Differently put, 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
channels within a given time period [2]. It can have many and multiple
purposes, such as informing the public of new or little known traffic
rules, increasing problem awareness or convincing people to refrain
from hazardous behaviours and adopting safe ones instead.
This article is based on a keynote speech delivered by Fred Wegman
at the PRI (Prévention Routière Internationale) World Congress on June
24th 2009. In this speech, Wegman examined issues pertinent to the
present and future of road safety campaigns by discussing evaluation
practices, common fallacies concerning the nature of human behaviour
and new insights into behaviour modification that may be of use for the
future of road safety campaigns. In this article, we elaborate on the
insights put forth in the speech with the aim of providing inspiration for
the future of road safety campaigns. In order to do so, we first discuss the
current practices in evaluating road safety campaign evaluations or the
lack of such. We will then examine some of the methods of behavioural
modification that are already widely implemented in road safety
campaigns. Finally, we will delve into the many promising methods of
behavioural modification that can be found in fields such as psychology
and economics. These methods and insights are discussed in terms of
the ways they might be used to positively influence road user behaviour
and by extension, road safety itself.
1.1. Are road safety campaigns effective?
Surprisingly, all the more so given the sheer number of road safety
campaigns, only a fraction of such campaigns are formally and
thoroughly evaluated [3]. Despite this dearth of evaluation results,
there are a number of reports on the subject that give some indication as
to the potential effects of road safety campaigns. For example, in 2004
the World Health Organisation concluded that road safety campaigns
were able to influence behaviour when used in conjunction with
legislation and law enforcement. However, the report also states that “...
when used in isolation education, information and publicity generally
IATSS Research 34 (2011) 80–86
⁎ Corresponding author. Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
E-mail address: [e-mail] (F. Wegman).
0386-1112/$ – see front matter © 2011 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.iatssr.2011.01.003
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
IATSS Research

do not deliver tangible and sustained reductions in deaths and serious
injuries” [4].
Likewise, a meta-analysis showed that the effects of mass media
campaigns alone are small, especially when compared to the effects of
campaigns that were combined with other measures [5]. Without
enforcement and/or education a mass media campaign has virtually
no effect in terms of reducing the number of road accidents, while
adding either of both those measures ensures a reduction of over ten
percent (see Table 1). Interestingly enough, it is the local, personally
directed campaigns that show by far the biggest effect on road
accidents. However, it should be noted that the confidence interval for
this result is quite large, meaning that there is a large uncertainty
about the true value of this parameter. More importantly, however, is
that the meta-analysis only contained a few studies on this type of
campaign, and as such this result is based on rather few studies [6],
which provide another alternative explanation for the fact that local
individualised campaigns seem so much more effective than other
types of campaigns.
1.2. The business of evaluating road safety campaigns
The above discussion is based on the results of a meta-analysis. For
such analyses, the results of multiple evaluation studies are combined,
which allows for comparisons between different types of media
campaigns alone and media comparisons in conjunction with other
measures. For the evaluation of individual road safety campaigns,
however, it is often quite difficult to isolate the effects of the campaign
component from the effects of the measures the campaign is combined
with. That is, it is hard to tell if obtained results are the result of the
campaign itself, or whether they are the result of the campaign
combined with these other measures, or even whether the same effects
might have been reached by using those accompanying measures alone.
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.
When it comes to evaluating the results of a road safety campaign
that is or has actually been implemented in the field, a good research
design can do much to counteract many such difficulties in the
evaluation of road safety campaigns.
At the very least, setting up an evaluation study in a way that will
generate credible results requires some basic knowledge of the
principles involved in such studies. Such knowledge can be gleaned
from the reports engendered by the European CAST (Campaigns and
Awareness-raising Strategies in Traffic safety) project. This project was
aimed at making clear guidelines and tools to encourage the proper
design and evaluation of road safety campaigns. In doing so, a number of
tools were created that can be helpful in setting up a sound evaluation
study, such as a manual [2], an evaluation tool [7] and a reporting tool
[8]. For the purpose of this article, it is not our intention to outline the
necessary steps in the evaluation process. Indeed, the above publica-
tions acquit themselves of that purpose more thoroughly than one
article ever could. Our purpose in discussing the evaluation of road
safety campaigns is merely to point out the necessity of it.
1.3. The importance of evaluating road safety campaigns
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.
Another manner in which the current lack of formal evaluation
practices is to be lamented, is that it means that ineffective campaigns
and campaign techniques are allowed to continue unchallenged. The
continued use of funds for campaigns whose effectiveness is unclear
means that available funds are not spent on other, possibly more
effective road safety interventions. This may even keep the field from
looking to employ other new and less traditional approaches. Hopefully,
as evaluations become more common in the field of road safety
campaigns, it will also create some headway for newer methods of
behavioural modification to come into play in the stead of techniques
that have yet to be proven effective.
In furthering our aim to enhance the effectiveness of future road
safety campaigns, we will now proceed to discuss some insights into
current practices and beliefs within the realm of road safety campaigns,
such as different implications of the targeted behaviour type for the
campaign method, the notion that media campaigns can be used to
reach the whole population and the controversy surrounding the use of
fear appeals.
2. Current practices within the realm of road safety campaigns
2.1. Target behaviour: differences between different types of behavioural
targets
One of the things that are reflected by the meta-analyses into road
safety campaigns over the years, is that the effectiveness of such
campaigns vary considerably depending on the type of behaviour that
is targeted [5,9]. Campaigns aimed at increasing seat belt use, for
example, have been very effective in promoting its usage (see [10], for
this and other examples of effective road safety campaigns). To a
certain point that is, because as behaviours become more pervasive, it
becomes increasingly hard for campaigns to have any further effect on
them. More specifically, as the base level of the measure of effect
increases, the impact and expected improvement as a result of a mass
media campaign is reduced [11]. Thus, the ‘baseline’ of a behaviour
must be taken into account in determining beforehand if a road safety
campaign is to be of any use.
However, not only the baseline of the targeted behaviour matters
when considering what type of road safety campaign to implement.
As was stated before, all aspects of the target behaviour itself should
be considered in determining the best approach. That is, what works
Table 1
Effects of road safety campaigns on road accidents [5].
Best estimate 95% confidence interval
General effect −9% (−13; −5)
Mass media alone +1% (−9;+12)
Mass media + enforcement −13% (−19; −6)
Mass media + enforcement + education −14% (−22; −5)
Local individualised campaigns −39% (−56; −17)
81T. Hoekstra, F. Wegman / IATSS Research 34 (2011) 80–86