Gender differences in the effectiveness of public education messages aimed at smartphone use among young drivers

Abstract

Objective: The main aim of this survey study was to evaluate the relative persuasiveness of three newly developed and piloted public education messages aimed at monitoring/reading social interactive technology on a smartphone among young male and female drivers. In accordance with the Step Approach to Message Design and Testing, the messages were evaluated on a number of outcome measures and also explored the influence of self-reported involvement in the target behavior.

Methods: Participants (N = 152; 105 F) were aged 17 to 25 years (M_age = 20.14 years, SD = 2.35) and were randomly allocated to either an intervention (one of the three messages) or control (no message) condition. The messages in the intervention group were assessed on acceptance (i.e., behavioral intention and message effectiveness), rejection, and the third person effect (TPE) differential score (i.e., the message is perceived to be more effective for others than for themselves).

Results: Hierarchical regression analyses found that, compared to males, females reported: a) lower intention to monitor/read social interactive technology on a smartphone while driving, b) lower rejection; and, c) lower TPE likelihood, irrespective of message.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that young male drivers and young female drivers require different message content to be effective and support the importance of including multiple outcome measures to explain the messages’ persuasive effects.

Keywords:

• Road safety
• public education messages
• young drivers
• driver distraction
• step approach to message design and testing
• evaluation
• smartphone

Notes

1 Please note: This work was conducted at the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland at Queensland University of Technology. The first author, however, has since left this institution and her current address is The University of Newcastle.

2 For adequate power (.8), N = 122 would be required for regressions comprising the number of predictors in the current study. Thus, the N = 152 was deemed sufficient.

3 In the Australian state of Queensland, P1 and P2 licences form part of the graduated driver licence system and are intermediary licences held by newly licenced drivers for up to three years before they receive an open (unrestricted) licence

4 For readers interested in details of message development and concept testing in accordance with Steps 2 and 3 of the SatMDT, please see Lewis et al. (2016).

5 In accordance with previous studies (Gauld et al. 2016), ‘social interactive technology’ was defined as ‘functions accessed on a smartphone through which the user communicates with other people (e.g., social media, text messages, emails); ‘monitoring/reading’ was defined as ‘checking your smartphone for communications and/or reading them; ‘while driving’ included being stopped in traffic lights, or in traffic, anywhere other than in a parked vehicle’.

6 See Table A.2 for a full list of scale items

7 Given there were more than two categories for the ‘message’ predictor variable (i.e., four for intention [three messages plus control group] and three for each of the other outcome variables), it was necessary to develop dummy variables for each message so they were suitable for regression analyses. The dummy variables were developed with the control group as reference category for intention and ‘Red Light’ as the reference category for message effectiveness, rejection, and the TPE differential.

8 Please note that additional references appear in the appendix.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation’s Carla Patterson Memorial Grant 2018 at Queensland University of Technology.