Intercultural Differences in Road Safety Performance and Support for Road Safety Policy Measures

Abstract

Road safety policy measures are meant to improve road safety, i.e., to reduce the number of people injured or killed in road traffic crashes. Despite the obvious benefits of such policy measures, often public support is low, because often such measures require road users to give up some of their freedom of movement. In this chapter, it is shown how differences in national culture are associated with differences in the level of public support for a range of policy measures. National culture can be operationalized into several dimensions. Using data from a recent update of two of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (labeled as “Independent” and “Confucianist”), it is first shown that these dimensions are strongly associated with economic indicators and road safety performance. Subsequently, it is illustrated that these dimensions can also be good predictors for public support for several road safety measures, in particular when these are perceived to restrict freedom of movement.