Fear Arousal In Road Safety Advertising

Abstract

This study examines the effect of fear arousal in road safety advertising and perceived efficiency on its acceptance as well as rejection that are typical in Malaysia. Most research in “fear arousal” are generally related to examining the persuasive effect and effectiveness of different type of threat-based in human communication. In advertising, high fear arousing ads can be very impactful and persuasive, and it’s easy to see the relation between a fear and persuasion. Our research suggest that the level of fear arousal play an important key toward the acceptance and rejection of the message. For example, lowering the level of fear arousal in ads could increase

Introduction

Its been a fact that for the longest time, risky driver behaviours such as speeding and drinking while driving continue to represent significant contributors to major road accident, reflecting the perennial involvement of road user behaviour in road traffic injury. However, with the advent of new technology such as smarphone and new short-system message apps that grew with it, a new threat toward drivers came to existence which we all known as texting while driving. Texting while driving is a driving behaviour that has significantly contribute toward the result in distraction and carelesness while driving.

There is been several effort by the government to help reduce the exponentially increase of bad behavior while driving. Whilst there is a growing body of evidence that traffic law enforcement programs, such as roadblock and speed cameras, are effective in reducing illegal high-risk behaviours (Cameron, Cavallo & Gilbert, 1992; Homel, 1988), mass media advertising plays an important role in addressing these

This kind of approach are done by spreading the knowledge and awareness regarding the variables or information that need to be spread, or the layman term for it is by doing an informational public service announcement. (Delaney, Lough, Whelan, & Cameron, 2004, hlm. 12) Another approach is obviously by utilizing fear appeal, which by presenting the very risk itself toward the respondent. This can be seen by the use of image based or TV commercial to directly visualize the risk and danger as well as invoking the fear among the respondent.

3.1 How Does the Message Were Perceived. It is suggested that a fear appeal used in road safety advertising can end up being perceived in 2 general way:

i) The message is received and respondent change their behaviour. ii) The message is received but the respondent decided not to change their behaviour. The first conclusion is driven with the thought that the messages has been successful in evoking the fear and anxiety in the respondent, hence making it persuasive. On the other hand, the second conclusion depict that the messages intending to arouse a high level of fear or anxiety are most likely unable to do so. In other words, respondent might react negatively to the fear message and against the attempt to arouse fear in them. (Elliott,