Evaluation of Female Driver Responses
to Impaired Driving Messages
Final Report -- December 2000

V. Conclusions and Recommendations

A. Answers to Study Questions

Should anti-DWI messages be targeted differently for female drivers than male drivers?

The participants believed that women were more likely to heed PSAs than men were and that emotional appeals, especially ones including children, would have a greater impact on them. While they see themselves as different from men in a number of ways, women appear to understand and pay attention to PSAs even if they believe they are targeted at men. Wiliszowski et al. (1998) found that men prefer “real life” stories and do not believe that emotional appeals in PSAs work with males. Therefore, to the extent that emotional appeals are more effective with females than males, it is worthwhile to design PSAs specifically for women.

Which type of approach (media and venue) is best for targeting female drivers?

Television overwhelmingly was viewed as the most effective form of media by the young women in our focus groups. Radio appeared to be the least appreciated medium. Print PSAs were noticeable as billboards and, to a lesser extent, in magazines. One caveat to the overwhelming preference for television PSAs is that many participants commonly switch television channels when commercials are aired. This also was true for radio. Finally, several participants mentioned the Internet as a potential venue for PSAs.

How do females respond to different persuasive techniques (e.g. informational, authoritative, emotional)?

Our data clearly show that emotional appeals were the most persuasive technique for young women. Using children in PSAs was especially effective. Although mothers particularly were affected, most of the other women also were touched by messages with children in them.

The authoritative PSAs appealed to very few participants and were received negatively by several of them, especially the younger women. Authoritative approaches are not recommended for this population.

Assessing informational techniques is less clear cut. The focus group discussions indicated that informational PSAs were appreciated if the information was new without being "preachy." The PSAs judged most effective by the participants tended to have higher ratings for "useful information." However, the PSAs rated as the most informative were not ranked highly for effectiveness when compared to the others. Notably, the ratings for the two questions on the value of information contained in the specific PSAs often were contradictory (see Tables 4 and 6, especially questions 6 and 7). This indicates that "useful information" does not need to be new information. A mostly informational approach does not appear to be a worthwhile strategy. Regardless, any information included in a PSA needs to be current and accurate.

B. Implications for Anti-DWI Public Service Announcements

Designing anti-DWI public service announcements specifically for young women could increase the effectiveness of PSAs with that population.

The video format was preferred by the focus group participants over other mediums.
Print PSAs had less appeal than video but more appeal than radio; vivid images were more likely to be remembered. Billboards and magazines are potential locations for print PSAs.
Radio clearly was viewed as the least effective medium.
Internet advertising, either on news sites or other web sites, is a potential PSA medium that should be investigated.

Several techniques that can make PSAs more effective with the young women in our focus groups:

Use emotional appeals, such as depicting children as victims or the impact of drinking and driving on families.
Develop PSAs with real life situations showing the consequences of drinking and driving.
Design impaired driving PSAs that have shock value and that contain graphic images of the consequences of drinking and driving.
Use characters or narrators in the PSAs with whom the targeted audience can identify. One means of achieving this is to give the messages a local flavor, even at the cost of reducing the production quality of the PSA.

Conversely, certain techniques were not well accepted by the participants in our focus groups:

Using celebrities as spokespersons for anti-DWI messages was not deemed effective. The women were skeptical of the celebrities' motivations and had a hard time relating to them.
Authoritative messages were discounted by the participants, especially the youngest women. The underage women were especially sensitive to PSA messages that seemed to dictate their behavior or were "preachy."
Using humor in anti-DWI messages probably should be avoided. Although several young women mentioned that the humor in some PSAs grabbed their attention, others interpreted humor as trivializing the message.

It would be valuable to convince more young women that they should plan ahead to have a designated driver when their group is out drinking. Among young women, a designated driver is usually the person who, at the end of the night, has had the least to drink. This common practice should be discouraged, perhaps by providing free nonalcoholic beverages for designated drivers. Table 10 below is a summary from our study of "what works" and "what does not work" with young women.

Table 10. Suggestions for reaching young women with anti-DWI messages

Effectiveness of media and venue	Techniques for effective PSAs	Techniques to avoid
Video and television PSAs are preferred Print PSAs can be effective (e.g., billboards and magazine ads) Radio PSAs were least effective Explore PSAs for the Internet	Use emotional appeals Include real situations showing consequences Use graphic images to shock the audience Employ characters with whom the audience can identify (e.g., PSAs with a local flavor) Redefine the norms regarding the role of designated drivers Use multiple approaches along with public service announcements	Using celebrity spokepersons Using authoritative messages Using humor

Our study suggests that it is very difficult to break through the media clutter with an attention-getting visual PSA. Competing with the daily volume of advertisements also is problematic. Therefore, we suggest pursuing other approaches to reducing drinking and driving concurrently with PSAs.

PSAs are only one component of an effective anti-impaired driving program. Two alternate methods of transportation were brought up by the focus groups: the designated driver and public transportation programs especially designed for drinkers who do not want to drive. Other promising strategies in the field that could be used in combination with PSAs to reduce drinking and driving are: sobriety checkpoints, ignition interlocks for repeat offenders, highly visible enforcement of DWI laws, enforcing laws against serving intoxicated patrons, and lowering the legal limit for drunk driving to .08 BAC.

C. Recommendations for Future Research

Our study and other qualitative research suggest a number of research projects that would be valuable to those who are designing future impaired driving campaigns. This study explored how young women viewed the differences between men and women in their perceptions of PSAs. A larger study directly comparing young men's and young women's perceptions of the effectiveness of various anti-DWI messages would yield a more definitive answer.

Our data suggest a key question: Does the targeted population's retention of the anti-DWI messages in PSAs vary with approach? This question could be examined in two ways. Time could be purchased in market research where people could view television shows with PSAs and general commercial advertising. Followup after the screening would indicate which messages were remembered. A more costly method would be to followup selected PSAs with a random digit dialing survey to determine public awareness of the PSAs and their messages. This would allow the researchers to say something about the proportion of the population that pays attention to PSAs.

Not all people are open to PSA messages. Determining the preferred PSA approaches among those who do pay attention to PSAs would be very valuable. It is quite possible that the approaches that work for this group differ from the approaches that appeal to people who turn the channel or walk away when the commercials start. A related issue is the effectiveness of the PSA messages with those drivers most at risk for drinking and driving.

It may be useful to do a cost-benefit analysis of television PSAs with higher costs, radio PSAs, and print PSAs with much lower costs. Given a finite budget for PSA campaigns to prevent drinking and driving, we need to see where NHTSA would get “the biggest bang for the buck,” and “Where would the Internet PSAs fall in this array?”

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