Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Exploring the influencing factors of public traffic safety awareness in China

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Cognition, Technology & Work Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This research aims to develop a public traffic safety awareness questionnaire and explore the factors influencing public traffic safety awareness in China. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 5200 people in Jiaozuo, China, to assess their public traffic safety awareness. Based on 5029 effective samples, the developed public traffic safety awareness scale passed the reliability and validity tests and identified three factors: traffic safety behaviour, traffic safety attitude and traffic accident cognition. The Chinese version of the Traffic Climate Scale (three factors: external affective demand, internal requirements and functionality) and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory in China (five factors: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness) were also used in the questionnaire. The results of correlation analysis, difference analysis and multiple linear regression analysis show that in terms of individual factors, public traffic safety awareness is significantly related to age, education level, number of children and personality traits, and there are significant differences between genders and across occupations. In terms of environmental factors, public traffic safety awareness is significantly related to traffic safety education, traffic violation records, approval of traffic violations and traffic climate. Internal requirements, external emotional demands, conscientiousness and agreeableness can effectively explain and predict public traffic safety awareness. The research results provide a strong reference to help road traffic safety management departments formulate policies and play a positive role in preventing and reducing traffic accidents and ensuring public safety.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • af Wåhlberg A, Barraclough P, Freeman J (2017) Personality versus traffic accidents; meta-analysis of real and method effects. Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 44(1):90–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aliane N, Fernández J, Bemposta S, Mata M (2012) Driver behaviour monitoring system based on traffic violation. IEEE-Intenational Conference on Intelligent Vehicles Symposium. IEEE

  • Barić D, Havârneanu GM, Măirean C (2020) Attitudes of learner drivers toward safety at level crossings: do they change after a 360° video-based educational intervention? Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 69:335–348

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benfield JA, Szlemko WJ, Bell PA (2007) Driver personality and anthropomorphic attributions of vehicle personality relate to reported aggressive driving tendencies. Pers Individ Differ 42(2):247–258

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown TA (2006) Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research Guilford. New York

  • BurtăVerde V, Chraif M, AnitEi M, MihăIlă T (2016) The incremental validity of the dark triad in predicting driving aggression. Accid Anal Prev 96:1–11

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Byrne BM, Erlbaums L (2009) Structural equation modeling with AMOS: basic concepts, applications, and programming. Routledge

  • Chang YH, Liao MY (2009) The effect of aviation safety education on passenger cabin safety awareness. Saf Sci 47(10):1337–1345

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choocharukul K, Sriroongvikrai K (2017) Road safety awareness and comprehension of road signs from international tourist’s perspectives: a case study of Thailand. Transp Res Proc 25:4518–4528

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen ES (1984) Personal and personal self-awareness

  • Connelly ML, Conaglen HM, Parsonson BS, Isler RB (1998) Child pedestrians’ crossing gap thresholds. Accid Anal Prev 30(4):443–453

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cordellieri P, Baralla F, Ferlazzo F, Sgalla R, Piccardi L, Giannini AM (2016) Gender effects in young road users on road safety attitudes. Behav Risk Percept Front Psychol 7(9):1412

    Google Scholar 

  • Curry AE, Mirman JH, Kallan MJ, Winston FK, Durbin DR (2012) Peer passengers: how do they affect teen crashes? J Adolesc Health 50(6):588–594

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duan LR, Mao LZ (2012) The road traffic safety awareness construction in our country is extremely urgent. Integr Transp 8:67–71

    Google Scholar 

  • Duperrex O, Bunn F, Roberts I (2002) Safety education of pedestrians for injury prevention: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials. BMJ 324(7346):CD001531

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feng ZX, Liu Q, Zhang WH, Wang K (2016) The current situations and futures of female drivers driving characteristics and behaviour mechanisms. J Saf Sci Technol 12(4):124–130

    Google Scholar 

  • Feng ZX, Zhan JJ, Wang CL, Ma CX, Huang ZP (2020) The association between musculoskeletal disorders and driver behaviors among professional drivers in China. Int J Occup Saf Ergon 26(3):551–561

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fuentes C, Gras ME, Font-Mayolas S, Bertran C, Sullman MJM, Ballester D (2010) Expectations of efficacy, social influence and age as predictors of helmet-use in a sample of Spanish adolescents. Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 13(5):289–296

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gehlert T, Hagemeister C, Özkan T (2014) Traffic safety climate attitudes of road users in Germany. Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 26:326–336

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghadban NR, Abdella GM, Al-Khalifa KN, Hamouda AM, Abdur-Rouf KB (2017) A Real case-based study exploring influence of human age and gender on drivers’ behaviour and traffic safety. In: International conference on applied human factors and ergonomics, vol 597. Springer, Cham, pp 807–816

  • Guggenheim N, Taubman-Ben-Ari O (2015) Ultraorthodox young drivers in Israel—driving through cultural lenses. Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 33:87–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hu L, Bentler PM (1999) Cut off criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Struct Equ Model 6(1):1–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larson RW, Jensen L, Kang H, Griffith A, Rompala V (2012) Values, religion, and culture in adolescent development. Peer groups as a crucible of positive value development in a global world. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 164–187

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee J, Huang YH, Murphy LA, Robertson MM, Garabet A (2015) Measurement equivalence of a safety climate scale across multiple trucking companies. J Occup Organ Psychol 89(2):352–376

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leviäkangs P (1998) Accident risk of foreign drivers—the case of Russian drivers in south-eastern Finland. Accid Anal Prev 30(2):245–254

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li JD (2013) Psychometric properties of ten-item personality inventory in china. China J Health Psychol 21(11):1688–1692

    Google Scholar 

  • Little TD (2013) Longitudinal structural equation modelling. Guilford Press

  • Liu KH (2007) Analysis and countermeasures study on the status quo of Beijing subway passenger’s safety awareness. Doctoral dissertation, Beijing university of chemical technology

  • Liu ZQ, Liu H, Zhao P (2013) A sports-based study on human age segmentation. The science education article collects. 22:150

  • Mcrae K, Gross JJ, Weber J, Robertson ER, Sokol-Hessner P, Ray RD et al (2012) The development of emotion regulation: an fmri study of cognitive reappraisal in children, adolescents and young adults. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 7(1):11–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nævestad TO, Bjørnskau T, Li X (2012) How can the safety culture perspective be applied to road traffic? Urban Transp China 32(2):139–154

    Google Scholar 

  • Nævestad TO, Phillips RO, Elvebakk B (2015) Traffic accidents triggered by drivers at work—a survey and analysis of contributing factors. Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 34(10):94–107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Öz B, Özkan T, Lajunen T (2010) An investigation of the relationship between organizational climate and professional drivers’ driver behaviours. Saf Sci 48(10):1484–1489

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rajalin S (1994) The connection between risky driving and involvement in fatal accidents. Accid Anal Prev 26(5):555–562

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rong J (2008) Research on the relationship of traffic safety awareness and safety behaviour. Doctoral dissertation, Beijing jiaotong university

  • Rosenbloom T, Ben-Eliyahu A, Nemrodov D (2008a) Children’s crossing behavior with an accompanying adult. Saf Sci 46(8):1248–1254

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbloom T, Haviv M, Peleg A, Nemrodov D (2008b) The effectiveness of road-safety crossing guards: knowledge and behavioural intentions. Saf Sci 46(10):1450–1458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schlembach C, Furian G, BrandstaTter C (2016) Traffic (safety) culture and alcohol use: cultural patterns in the light of results of the SARTRE 4 study. Eur Transp Res Rev 8(1):7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tabachnick BG, Fidell LS (2007) Using multivariate statistics (5th ed). Pearson Education, Inc

  • Tao D, Zhang R, Qu XD (2016) The effects of gender, age and personality traits on risky driving behaviours. J Shenzhen Univ Sci Eng 6:646–652

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Traffic management bureau of the ministry of public security (2016) China Road Traffic Accident Statistical Annual Report 2015

  • Vanderhaegen F (2016) A rule-based support system for dissonance discovery and control applied to car driving. Expert Syst Appl 65(12):361–371

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang DY, Liu QY, Ma L, Zhang YJ, Cong HZ (2019a) Road traffic accident severity analysis: a census-based study in China. J Saf Res 70:135–147

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang C, Zhang WH, Feng ZX, Sze NN, Xu J, Zhang XX et al (2019b) Aberrant behaviours in relation to the self-reported crashes of bicyclists in China: development of the Chinese cycling behaviour questionnaire. Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 66:63–75

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winston FK, Jacobsohn L (2010) A practical approach for applying best practices in behavioural interventions to injury prevention. Inj Prev 16:107–112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • World Health Organization (2015) Global status report on road safety. https://www.vitalstrategies.org/press/who-global-status-report-on-road-safety-2015/

  • Ying XW (2007) A study on the characteristics of urban driving behaviour and its potential influencing factors in China. Doctoral dissertation, Tsinghua University

  • Zhang Q, Ge Y, Qu W, Zhang K, Sun X (2018) The traffic climate in china: the mediating effect of traffic safety climate between personality and dangerous driving behaviour. Accid Anal Prev 113:213–223

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu GY, Yang J, Xie MM, Huang Y, Bian YY, Chen Q (2014) Investigation and reflection on traffic safety awareness of Fuzhou urban residents. Chin J Stat 4:33–35

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 51678211, 71971073) and the Open Fund for the Key Traffic Safety Laboratory of the Ministry of Public Security (Grant no. 2018ZDSYSKFKT02).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automobile and Traffic Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, 193 Tunxi Road, Baohe District, Hefei, 230009, Anhui Province, People’s Republic of China

    Zhongxiang Feng, Nuoya Ji & Can Zhao

  2. Institute of Transportation Management Science, Ministry of Public Security, Wuxi, 214000, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Yi Luo

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    N. N. Sze

  4. Institute of Systems Engineering, College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People’s Republic of China

    Junfang Tian

Authors
  1. Zhongxiang Feng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nuoya Ji
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Yi Luo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. N. N. Sze
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Junfang Tian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Can Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhongxiang Feng.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Feng, Z., Ji, N., Luo, Y. et al. Exploring the influencing factors of public traffic safety awareness in China. Cogn Tech Work 23, 731–742 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-020-00655-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-020-00655-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation