Distracted driving prevention: an analy...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze message features of fear appeals in current British roadsafety campaigns directed against mobile phone use while driving and to discuss barriers to explicit theoryuse in campaign message design.

Design/methodology/Approach – This message-centred research takes a qualitative content analyticalapproach to analyze nine British web-based road safety campaigns directed against mobile phone use whiledriving based on the extended parallel process model. Message content and message structure are analyzed.

Findings – There still exists a gap between theory and road safety campaign practice. The study revealsthat campaigns with fear appeals primarily use threatening messages but neglect efficacy-based contents.Severity messages emerge as the dominant content type while self-efficacy and response efficacy are hardlyrepresented. Fear appeal content in the threat component was mainly communicated through the mention oflegal,financial and physical harm, whereas efficacy messages communicated success stories andencouragement. As regards message structure, the threat component always preceded the efficacycomponent. Within each component, different patterns emerged.

Practical implications – To enhance efficacy in campaigns directed against distracted driving and toreduce the gap between theory and practice, social marketers should include messages that empowerrecipients to abstain from mobile phone use while driving. Campaigns should show recommended behavioursand highlight their usefulness and effectiveness.

Originality/value – This paper adds to limited research conducted on effect-independent messageproperties of fear appeals. It enhances understanding of fear appeal message features across the structure andcontent dimension. By discussing barriers to explicit theory use in social marketing practice and offeringpractical implications for social marketers, it contributes towards reducing the barriers to explicit theory usein campaign message design.