The main purpose of this study was to find out the effects of a financial reward for safe driving on both driving behaviour and associated risk perception. A total of 33 sensation avoiders and 33 sensation seekers drove an experimental route twice (two trials). In the first trial, all subjects were asked to drive normally, as they would do in everyday life. In the second trial, all subjects were randomly assigned to one of four reward conditions: (1) control condition in which the subjects were instructed again to drive as they normally would do; (2) a request condition in which they were asked to attempt to drive more safely; (3) a fixed reward condition comparable to the instruction condition; however, in this instruction they were told that they would receive a reward of ten guilders, if they actually drove more safely; and (4) an uncertain reward condition, comparable to the fixed reward condition; however, the reward was a lottery ticket that gave them a chance of winning either 100, 60 or 40 guilders. Driving speed was registered. The subjects were instructed to give verbal risk ratings (7-point scale) reflecting their perceived risk during both trips. In the first trial, sensation seekers drove faster than sensation avoiders, without perceiving this higher driving speed to be more risky. For the second trial, the largest speed reduction was observed for the sensation seekers in the uncertain reward condition. Only the speed reduction for the sensation seekers in the uncertain reward condition was associated with a decrease in perceived risk. (A)
Samenvatting