Predicting attitudes toward road safety from present and future time orientations: An economic approach

Abstract

Abstract Two concepts of time are proposed here: Present Time and Future Time. It is hypothesized that individuals make economic-like choices between the two kinds of time, as though they were ‘factors of production’. This general hypothesis is tested in the specific field of road safety: the higher the value of present-time and the lower the value of future-time, the more positive the attitudes toward speed. Hypotheses are also derived on attitudes toward active and passive security, active and passive maintenance, speedy cars and safe cars, strategies to overcome traffic jams. Results show that parameters of the relation between values of time and attitudes toward safety vary with sociodemographic characteristics.