Social attitudes towards roadside advertising

Anna, Olejniczak-Serowiec; Norbert, Maliszewski; Kinga, Ziętek · 2017 · DOAJ

DOI: 10.1051/matecconf/201712203006

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Summary

This study investigates the impact of roadside advertising on driver distraction and situational awareness, addressing the discrepancy between expert concerns regarding road safety and public opinion. While previous research has examined technical characteristics of advertisements, this work focuses on the influence of advertisement content, specifically emotional load, on driver behavior. The authors hypothesize that the emotional nature of advertising messages affects cognitive processes and attention, potentially compromising driving safety. The research comprises two studies. Study I was a nationwide Computer-Assisted Web Interview (CAWI) survey involving 1,095 Polish drivers. Participants reported their experiences with roadside advertising, including frequency of attention, conscious reading, and distraction across seven content types: positive emotional, negative emotional, sexual, humorous, riddles/curious, sales offers, and those resembling traffic signs. Study II was an experimental study with 50 amateur drivers using a two-task attention test. Participants viewed slides containing central digits and peripheral geometric figures alongside images of advertisements (positive, negative, neutral) or neutral non-advertisements. Performance was measured by accuracy in identifying digit order and counting peripheral figures. Study I results indicated that most drivers pay attention to roadside ads, with 42.8% reporting distraction and difficulties in understanding road situations. Subjective reports identified advertisements with negative emotional loads, sexual content, and riddles as the most distracting. Women perceived negative emotional ads as more distracting than men, while men found sexual content more distracting. Drivers over 54 years old reported less frequent attention to and reading of ads compared to younger groups. Study II experimental results contradicted subjective findings; performance on the peripheral figure-counting task was significantly lower when viewing positive emotional advertisements compared to negative ads or neutral non-advertisements. No significant differences were found for the central digit task. The findings suggest that while drivers subjectively perceive negative and sexual content as most distracting, positive emotional content experimentally impairs peripheral attention, which is critical for situational awareness. The study highlights that emotional load significantly influences driver attention, regardless of subjective perception. The authors conclude that further experimental research is needed to verify the specific dangers posed by different emotional values in advertisements, particularly for novice drivers who may rely more heavily on visual attention for driving operations.

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Topics

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• external distraction
• visual
• public messaging

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• Empirical Findings: observational prevalence