Investigating Driving Styles: A Validation Study of Multidimensional Driving Styles with British and Chinese Drivers

Abstract

Culture has a significant impact on driving behaviour and can play an important role in driving safety. The adaptation of traffic-related psychological instruments, developed elsewhere in new national contexts, should consider the cultural context. This paper validates the multidimensional driving style inventory (MDSI) with two cultural samples consisting of 215 Chinese drivers and 240 British drivers. A factor analysis of the driving style yielded evidence that both datasets present some variations from the original version of the instruments in the factorial structure. The analysis of the UK sample is comparable to the previous MDSI by indicating six driving styles, namely, anxious, risky and dissociative, high-velocity and angry, patient, careful, and distress-reduction. The analysis of the Chinese participants’ dataset showed its factorial structure with 40 items of the 44 original items divided over six styles. A new dimension, namely, an inattentive driving style, appeared in the Chinese sample. These differences raise the need to validate and adapt such instruments to consider cultural specificities. Implications were also derived for driver and road safety enhancement solutions through driver behaviour applications.