Appealing to our humanity: Designing and evaluating messages encouraging prosocial driving behaviours to enhance road safety

Prosocial driving behaviours represent actions that a driver performs not due to legal requirement but with an intent to benefit another road user. In other words, a driver behaves a certain way not because of legal obligation but out of consideration for a fellow road user and, in this regard, may be considered an approach that positions road safety as an issue within our broader humanity.

The project will address the following three key aims:

1. To scope the various on-road contexts where prosocial driving behaviours occur with focus on driving within the Queensland context. This will include exploration of such behaviours in regional versus metropolitan locations together with elicitation of the motivations underpinning engagement in such prosocial behaviours;
2. Drawing upon the insights from the scoping study, and an elicitation of individuals’ motivations for undertaking prosocial driving in such on-road contexts, a number of message concepts intended to promote prosocial driving in the Queensland context will be purpose-devised and concept tested.
3. To evaluate the relative effectiveness of the message concepts devised based on a robust conceptual and methodological underpinning informed by Lewis and colleagues’ Step approach to Message Design and Testing (SatMDT; Lewis et al., 2016). Particular focus will be on examining the relative effectiveness of message concepts promoting prosocial driving behaviour for different age and gender cohorts as well as across regional and metropolitan locations.