The road safety advertisements targeting drunk driving: do threat appeals actually arouse fear?

Abstract

Fear-arousing threat appeals are widely used in social marketing even though the research results on the effectiveness of threat appeals in road safety advertisements are controversial. However, only few studies examine whether threat appeals actually arouse fear and how this process influences the expected behaviour change. Thus, this study aims is to evaluate, whether road safety threat appeal advertisements targeting drunk driving arouse fear. 41 students (17.1 percent males; mean age 20.9 years) participated in the experimental study. Two road safety threat appeal advertisements targeting drunk driving and a clip of car wash advertisement were used as stimuli in the experiment. After watching the TV ad all participants had to evaluate the level of fear they felt. Study results revealed that both road safety threat appeal advertisements targeting drunk driving did not arouse fear (at least not stronger compared to usual advertisement). Even though both our road safety advertisements met the basic criteria for effective threat appeals, their effectiveness for drunk driving is still questionable. Further studies on the acceptance of road safety fear-arousing threat appeal advertisements are needed.