Advertising and road safety: A segmentation approach

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a paid advertising campaign on reducing the fatal accident rates in New Zealand using Poisson regression models. The campaign is aimed at changing attitudes towards dangerous driving by focusing on the dramatic consequences of such behaviour and uses a strong appeal to the emotion of fear to achieve the objectives of the campaign. Although other researchers have found that this campaign was not effective in changing behaviour, we argue that a campaign that uses such a strong appeal to fear will be effective but only among some segments of the population. We find that fatal accident rates in New Zealand, related to alcohol, drugs and speed, have been reduced among male drivers aged 15-24, 25-34 and 35-54 and female drivers aged 25-34.