Risk perception, risk taking, accident involvement and the need for stimulation

In Wilde's risk homeostasis theory, it is assumed that people have a target risk which guides their behaviour. The prime purpose of this experimental on-road study was to establish the effect of the need for stimulation or sensation seeking on this target risk. in addition, the relationship between sensation seeking and accident history was explored. Based on their score on Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale, 21 male sensation avoiders and 21 male sensation seekers were invited to participate in a controlled car-driving experiment. To control for the influence of driver experience on both target risk and accident involvement, equal numbers of inexperienced, intermediately experienced and experienced participants were selected. While following another car at a distance chosen by the participant, target risk was measured by time-headway - an index of risk taking, and verbal ratings - indices of cognitively perceived risk. Accident involvement was measured by reported past accidents. As expected on the basis of risk homeostasis theory, sensation avoiders preferred a greater following distance than sensation seekers. Unexpectedly, however, they did not perceive this longer following distance as less risky. Therefore, it was concluded that sensation seekers did not take more risk deliberately. The results of a Poisson regression analysis gave preliminary evidence for an influence of sensation seeking on the relationship between driver experience and accident involvement. For drivers with an experience of less than approximately 80,000 kilometres it was observed that sensation avoiders had been less liable to accidents than sensation seekers, whereas for drivers who had driven more than 80,000 kilometres, the accident involvement of sensation avoiders was greater than that of sensation seekers. The observation that sensation seekers become involved in accidents earlier in their driving career than sensation avoiders is discussed by referring to the observation that sensation seekers drove in a more risky fashion (e.g. shorter time-headway) without perceiving their behaviour to be more risky. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd