الگوبرداری موفقیت ایمنی جاده ها :آنچه که باید در نظر داشت

Success in social marketing is rarely clear cut and even more rarely believed to have been achieved. Social marketing practitioners are under increasing scrutiny to benchmark efficiencies of social change programs to achieve ‘success’ outcomes. Using road safety as a case study, this paper addresses the complex nature of success within a social marketing context. First, we discuss the conundrum facing road safety in articulating ‘success’ when at policy level success is quantified objectively, yet at a community level perceptions of system failure are equated with individual death. Methodologically we apply comparative empirical approaches to examine perceptual versus objective road safety outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion and proposal of alternate strategies for measuring programmatic success, and raise issues concerning the longevity of developing competitive and sustainable benchmarks.

The growth of social marketing as a complement to alternate social change approaches has accelerated over the last two decades (Andreasen, 2006). Despite much discussion concerning social marketing’s role, techniques and extension to the digital age (Andreasen, 2006, French and Blair-Stevens, 2006, Fry, 2007 and Dann et al., 2007) there is surprisingly little examination of what constitutes ‘success’ beyond a broad benchmark of increasing ‘good’ behaviour while ‘decreasing’ bad behaviour. In an era where performance outcome is critical to ongoing funding social marketing practitioners are increasingly under scrutiny to not only report campaign strategy but to evaluate and benchmark campaign outcomes as a measure of social change efficiency and effectiveness. One such area that has a history of recording performance metrics is that of road safety. Road safety in Australia is unique in that despite recent adoption of social marketing as a strategy to combat risky driving behaviour, performance metrics in the form of fatality trend data have been recorded since 1925 (Peder et al., 2004). In spite of overwhelming indications that road safety strategy initiatives have achieved significant successes over past 35 years, road safety faces a continuing situation where definitive ‘success’ is rarely achieved, ‘failure’ is enduring and the perceptual outcome of road safety strategy is represented as a ‘crisis’ situation in mainstream media. This scenario represents a conundrum for road safety practitioners. In many ways, articulating success where mortality figures represent the outcome of behaviour emphasises the conflict road safety faces. The reality of personal tragedy presents a perception of ‘failure’, while the objective statistical analysis of strategy implementation simultaneously suggests ‘success’ of that same campaign. As such, are road safety initiatives are able to benchmark and achieve successful outcomes? In answering this question, the paper is divided into three sections. The first section examines the relationship between objective and perceptual success paying particular attention to the key epistemological issue of whether ‘success’ is a possible outcome for road safety. The second section applies comparative empirical approaches to examine perceptual versus objective road safety outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion and proposal for alternate measures of success.

Road safety prevention is an inherently complex issue. This paper aimed to elucidate the complexities associated with articulating success within a road safety context by asking: Can road safety interventions achieve successful outcomes? The answer simply is in the affirmative. Nonetheless, there is particular concern regarding the inverse relationship between trend data and media coverage. On a range of measures, the total road safety intervention package of the road system, road user, social marketing, law enforcement and engineering is resulting in positive change and arguably successful outcomes. Fewer deaths are occurring despite rising rates of vehicle usage and rising population levels. How then can the negative media coverage be reconciled with the positive statistical results? To answer the question of road safety success it is necessary to revisit the Marsh and McConnell’s (2008) conceptualisation of success within policy development framework. Marsh and McConnell argue that in order to evaluate the effectiveness of policy implementation evaluative metrics need to produce objective and relative measures of success. They put forward a framework for assessing success focusing on three dimensions: process success, program success and political success. The dimensions of success of concern to this discussion are program and political success. An adaptation of Marsh and McConnell’s (2008) program success is applied further develop benchmarking measures for determining ‘success’ in road safety and as an exploration of how ‘success’ can be determined in related types of social marketing campaigns. We interpret political success in terms of the propensity of the media to influence society’s perception of road safety achievements. 4.1. Program benchmark metrics: road safety success measured in statistical outcomes The accepted road safety metric to quantify objective success of road safety efforts is expressed by the number of collisions, casualties and fatalities that occur within the transport system (Peder et al., 2004). Typically, fatality rates are recorded as rate of death per chosen measure (e.g., deaths per 100,000 population). These measures are currently used as retrospective metrics and historical trend data. Rather than using retrospective data, it is proposed that road fatality rates be used as the foundation for the development of a competitive benchmark of “Projected Death Rate”. Projected Death Rates combines the Adjusted Death Rate measurement of the previous year with the projected population levels for the forthcoming period. This creates a social marketing competitive benchmark in line with the recommendations of Ambler, 2000 and Uncles, 2005 for commercial marketing. Competitive benchmarking sets realistic goals which are adjusted for changes in markets such as market expansion or growth in the overall size of the market. For road safety campaigns, population growth, vehicle movement, and vehicle registrations provide a set of metrics for overall target populations to be addressed by road safety interventions. Projected Death Rate (PDR) figures set a target road toll based on the current National Average Adjusted Death Rate (national total) or state based Adjusted Death Totals. For the purpose the paper, only the National Projected Death Rate is calculated for years 2008–2012. These figures are outlined in Table 3, and explained in further detail below.The formulae for the Projected Death Rate is based on multiplying an existing Adjusted Death Rate measure with the ABS projected population for a given year. To illustrate the ADR concept four different calculations were created based on the different formats of Adjusted Death Rates. The first projected road toll (Series 1) is a mathematical projection of road death based on the maintenance of the current (2007) National ADR, and no incremental improvement in the ADR figures. The flat rate assumes any significant performance improvements in one state would be counter balanced by losses in other areas to leave the road safety outcomes static across the entire country. The second projected road toll is based on an assumption of continual incremental success in road safety which lowers the National ADR by 1 point each year (e.g., 2008 has an ADR of 80, 2009 uses an ADR of 79). This approach recognises the continued learning capacity of the road safety intervention campaigns, and the capacity for better performance whilst also compensating for population growth rates. The third form of projected road toll (Series 3) is designed to project the lower limit of the best case road toll based on the current lowest ADR across the past decade of ADR calculations – which, in this case, is represented by the 2006 Victorian road toll (ADR68). The best case scenario calculation is aimed at providing a minimum expected fatality rate for the national toll assuming that all states and territories equal the all time best recorded ADR from the sample period. This is a mathematical calculation to provide a lower boundary for assessing road safety success. The fourth form of the Projected Death Rate (Series 4) operates in reverse to Series 3 projections as it attempts to determine the upper boundary worst case scenario of fatalities. This projection calculated the projected death rate for the nation based on the highest aggregate ADR score from the sample time frame (ADR109) which occurred in 1996. Initial calculations of the upper boundary using the highest state figures resulted in an ADR score of 414 from the 1996 Northern Territory (72 death per 174,000 residents). This was regarded as an improbable upper theoretical limit based on the size of the NT sample. Consequently, although the best case was drawn from the state levels, the worst case uses the national aggregate figures. If the ADR projection rates are used to calculate target rates for the road safety program success rates, it becomes possible to set best case scenarios for annual road fatalities, and realistic goals based on different scenario plans. For example, the current best case (ADR68) would result in approximately 1400 deaths, and the maintaining the current best case national performance (ADR80) would project a total of approximately 1650 deaths for the 2008 period. This form of programmatic goals can then be measured using the actual fatality rates of the period against the population adjusted predicted rates of death. However, whilst these benchmarks are based on an unemotional application of mathematics, economics and statistical data, road safety is not a value neutral position. As a society, there is a need to open discussion as to when ‘enough’ becomes ‘enough’ in seeking to prevent death in one aspect of societal interaction, and the allocation of resources that can be diverted to other areas of the community. 4.2. Political benchmark metrics: road safety success measured in media outcomes Whilst the programmatic goals can be set in terms of projected deaths per annum, road safety is also a political outcome, and as such, is dependent on less objective outcome measurements. As noted in the media coverage study, the nature and volume of negative road safety outcomes has increased in inverse proportion to the positive decline in ADR road fatality. Road safety, as with many social marketing campaigns, can only offer uncertain outcomes from positive or negative behaviour. Speeding is not automatically fatal, and safe driving behaviour is not automatically rewarded with survival. Road safety success is partly a matter of perception within the target audience and community. Potentially, declarations of success within road safety may encourage a decline in attention to safety messages, or a decrease in adherence to road safety conditions. Alternatively, positive reinforcement and perceptions of tangible outcomes from intangible behaviour may increase adherence to road safety messages. Currently, as contemporary media coverage emphasises failure at the individual level and macro-level, the outcomes associated with positive portrayals of road safety success are relatively unknown. Future research is needed to determine public opinion as to what constitutes ‘success’ within social marketing, and more specifically within the road safety framework. The question of whether the community is prepared to accept a trade-off of a minimum level of unavoidable fatalities in exchange for road vehicle movements at the current, or increased levels, needs to be further explored.