Fear-based public communication uses shocking messages and images to evoke feelings of fear and threat with the aim of getting people to change risky behaviour. A meta-analysis [36] showed that fear-based public communication does not consistently succeed in influencing behaviour. Some campaigns succeed (e.g. [31] [37] [38]), but others do not (e.g. [33] [39] [40]). This makes it hard to determine whether such campaigns actually lead to fewer road crashes.
In any case, the studies suggest that fear-based public communication cannot have positive effects if it only evokes fear without simultaneously providing people with information about the personal risk they run and without providing feasible and effective behavioural alternatives [31] [32] [33]. Without these conditions, people are likely to seek other ways to reduce the threat, such as ignoring or actively denying the content of the campaign. Campaigns do need to be very well constructed to avoid this, and in practice, fear-based public communication more often than not fails to meet the requirements. Recent studies show that the vast majority of fear-based public communication campaigns mainly highlight the severity of the risks, and that behavioural alternatives in particular are rarely included [39] [41]; see also the question What determines the effectiveness of public communication?. There is even evidence that fear-based public communication can adversely affect behavioural intentions [42].
Fear-based public communication also tends to have less effect on young people and men [36] [43] [44], even though they are often the target group.
