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Exploring the relationship between attitudes, risk perceptions, fatalistic beliefs and pedestrian behaviors in China

Exploring the relationship between attitudes, risk perceptions, fatalistic beliefs and pedestrian behaviors in China
Exploring the relationship between attitudes, risk perceptions, fatalistic beliefs and pedestrian behaviors in China

Road safety has become a worldwide public health concern. Although many factors contribute to collisions, pedestrian behaviors can strongly influence road safety outcomes. This paper presents results of a survey investigating the effects of age, gender, attitudes towards road safety, fatalistic beliefs and risk perceptions on self-reported pedestrian behaviors in a Chinese example. The study was carried out on 543 participants (229 men and 314 women) from 20 provinces across China. Pedestrian behaviors were assessed by four factors: errors, violations, aggressions, and lapses. Younger people reported performing riskier pedestrian behaviors compared to older people. Gender was not an influential factor. Of the factors explored, attitudes towards road safety explained the most amount of variance in self-reported behaviors. Significant additional variance in risky pedestrian behaviors was explained by the addition of fatalistic beliefs. The differences among the effects, and the implications for road safety intervention design, are discussed. In particular, traffic managers can provide road safety education and related training activities to influence pedestrian behaviors positively.

Fatalistic beliefs, Pedestrian behaviors, Risk perceptions, Traffic safety attitudes
1661-7827
Liu, Mingyu
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Wu, Jianping
db314ad9-d011-4c77-9ae1-b190f82fd013
Yousaf, Adnan
c1118d36-0788-40f6-a7a0-c0649e520ae9
Wang, Linyang
d853bef5-1a47-44ad-978f-ed01deb7c89b
Hu, Kezhen
e3a2e9bf-9719-4e90-8e35-6003a0493c1f
Plant, Katherine L.
3638555a-f2ca-4539-962c-422686518a78
McIlroy, Rich C.
68e56daa-5b0b-477e-a643-3c7b78c1b85d
Stanton, Neville A.
351a44ab-09a0-422a-a738-01df1fe0fadd
Liu, Mingyu
a86b11a6-dbdc-41c8-961d-b1d84529e85d
Wu, Jianping
db314ad9-d011-4c77-9ae1-b190f82fd013
Yousaf, Adnan
c1118d36-0788-40f6-a7a0-c0649e520ae9
Wang, Linyang
d853bef5-1a47-44ad-978f-ed01deb7c89b
Hu, Kezhen
e3a2e9bf-9719-4e90-8e35-6003a0493c1f
Plant, Katherine L.
3638555a-f2ca-4539-962c-422686518a78
McIlroy, Rich C.
68e56daa-5b0b-477e-a643-3c7b78c1b85d
Stanton, Neville A.
351a44ab-09a0-422a-a738-01df1fe0fadd

Liu, Mingyu, Wu, Jianping, Yousaf, Adnan, Wang, Linyang, Hu, Kezhen, Plant, Katherine L., McIlroy, Rich C. and Stanton, Neville A. (2021) Exploring the relationship between attitudes, risk perceptions, fatalistic beliefs and pedestrian behaviors in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (7), [3378]. (doi:10.3390/ijerph18073378).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Road safety has become a worldwide public health concern. Although many factors contribute to collisions, pedestrian behaviors can strongly influence road safety outcomes. This paper presents results of a survey investigating the effects of age, gender, attitudes towards road safety, fatalistic beliefs and risk perceptions on self-reported pedestrian behaviors in a Chinese example. The study was carried out on 543 participants (229 men and 314 women) from 20 provinces across China. Pedestrian behaviors were assessed by four factors: errors, violations, aggressions, and lapses. Younger people reported performing riskier pedestrian behaviors compared to older people. Gender was not an influential factor. Of the factors explored, attitudes towards road safety explained the most amount of variance in self-reported behaviors. Significant additional variance in risky pedestrian behaviors was explained by the addition of fatalistic beliefs. The differences among the effects, and the implications for road safety intervention design, are discussed. In particular, traffic managers can provide road safety education and related training activities to influence pedestrian behaviors positively.

Text
ijerph-18-03378-v2 - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 23 March 2021
Published date: 24 March 2021
Additional Information: Funding Information: Funding: This research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR; 16/137/122) using UK aid from the UK Government to support global health research. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the UK Department of Health and Social Care. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords: Fatalistic beliefs, Pedestrian behaviors, Risk perceptions, Traffic safety attitudes

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 450696
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/450696
ISSN: 1661-7827
PURE UUID: 83f243e5-7d4d-4f6d-91a2-7a9224f6250f
ORCID for Katherine L. Plant: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4532-2818
ORCID for Rich C. McIlroy: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-8101
ORCID for Neville A. Stanton: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8562-3279

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Date deposited: 06 Aug 2021 16:31
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:41

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Contributors

Author: Mingyu Liu
Author: Jianping Wu
Author: Adnan Yousaf
Author: Linyang Wang
Author: Kezhen Hu
Author: Rich C. McIlroy ORCID iD

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