The Influence of Fear Arousal and Perceived Efficacy on the Acceptance and Rejection of Road Safety Advertising Messages

This paper examines the effects of fear arousal and perceived efficacy on the acceptance and rejection of road safety advertising messages that are typical in Australia and New Zealand. Our results suggest that the level of fear arousal could be lowered without a significant effect on the message acceptance rates but could result in a lower rate of message rejection. Our results also suggest that the inclusion of explicit coping strategies in the road safety messages has a significant positive effect on message acceptance. It is recognised that road safety campaigns often utilise a combination of advertisements featuring varying levels of threat and efficacy. Hence, we recommend that current campaigns be reviewed to assess the expected amount of fear aroused and to ensure that a variety of coping behaviours or strategies are explicitly incorporated into the advertisements.