Effectiveness of Different 'Appeals'in Road Safety Propaganda,

摘要

The report examines the effect of motivating appeals as used in road safety propaganda,and compares them with a plain factual technique. Much of the work is concerned with use of horror in propaganda but seven other appeals are also dealt with. The study makes use of subjective assessment and objective measurements of changes in behavior. In subjective tests some of the emotional appeals received higher ratings than the factual technique,but they did not cause any greater change in behavior. The studies were,however,carried out with captive audiences and there was no need to attract their attention. On the basis of the limited knowledge available it appears that the most effective appeal for road safety propaganda is likely to be basically factual with some content of serious emotion such as horror or family responsibility,preferably presented in a novel way to aid memorability.