The Road Safety Trust has provided funding to evaluate the next phase of a project which aims to use culturally tailored and targeted messaging to improve seatbelt usage among different communities.
The Message Not Received project was first undertaken by Birmingham City Council and So-Mo in 2020, thanks to funding from the Trust.
It tested the hypothesis that culturally-tailored and targeted messaging could improve seatbelt use in Birmingham’s Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and, in turn, reduce passenger casualty rates.
The campaign was co-designed with young people aged 16-24 years from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and the messaging was tested for saliency, memorability and potential to change behaviour using randomised control trials.
Aiming to build upon its success, Transport for West Midlands has provided funding to broaden the geography and reach of the original project.
The additional funding from The Road Safety Trust will allow for an evaluation that will measure the impact of the Message Not Received project by understanding the reach, visibility and the behavioural change delivered by the online media campaign.
This will allow the pilot to be finely tuned for further roll out in the future.
Nicola Wass, founder and CEO of So-Mo, said: “Although the behavioural sciences are increasingly recognised as the most effective way to understand and change behaviour at scale, there remains an ongoing need for rigorous evaluation of real-world application.
“This project not only seeks to tackle an important road risk but will also contribute to a growing body of evidence demonstrating how behavioural science-based approaches can be applied in the context of highways, mobility, and transportation”.
Sonya Hurt, CEO of The Road Safety Trust, said: “Recent research has shown that seat belt usage is slipping with a corresponding impact on road deaths and severity of injury. Previous research into seatbelt use by So-Mo has shown that the picture can be far bleaker when ethnicity is taken into consideration.
“Tailored campaigns like this could prove to be powerful tools in tackling this difficult national issue. We hope that the additional funding will provide leverage to the project’s momentum and make a real difference to young people’s seat belt usage and ultimately save lives.”
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