Understanding the unique contribution of aversion to risk taking in predicting drivers' self-reported speeding

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Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the importance of a drivers’ attitude towards risk taking as one of the factors influencing safe driving behaviours. However, the strength of the relationship between drivers’ attitude towards risk and their speeding may depend on other factors such as age, gender, and the frequency of driving, or even combinations of these factors. A survey completed by 400 students at the University of Southern Queensland found that aversion to risk taking was the single strongest predictor of self-reported speeding (sr2 = .07) even when competing against well known predictors such as driving efficacy, worry and concern, likelihood of accidents, personality traits (e.g., thrill seeking, dislike of driving, hazard-monitoring, fatigue proneness, and aggression) and coping variables (e.g., task-focused, reappraisal, emotion-focused, avoidance, and confrontive coping). Further analyses focused on the moderation effects of age, gender, and driving frequency. The first analysis found that for younger drivers (≤ 20 years, N = 108), aversion to risk taking was still the strongest unique predictor (sr2 = .07). The second analysis confirmed an interaction between gender and aversion to risk taking with males (N = 79) reporting a much weaker relationship between aversion to risk taking and speeding (sr2 = .01). The third analysis showed that drivers who are less frequent drivers (N = 105) also have a weaker relationship between aversion to risk taking and speeding (sr2 = .04). The inclusion of personality variables and coping variables in this study allowed the unique contribution of individuals’ aversion to risk-taking to be determined, while the examination of the potential moderating effects of age, gender, and frequency of driving showed that this unique contribution varies between 1% and 7%. Researchers must consider the possible moderating effects of these factors when specifying models that link individual attitudes, perceptions, and attributes to driving behaviours.

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