Increasing Seat Belt Wearing and Decreasing Handheld Phone Use While Driving

University of Pennsylvania

Status: Completed

Conditions: Driving Behaviors; Distracted Driving; Impaired Driving

Treatments: Behavioral: WOOP (aka, mental contrasting with implementation intentions., Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan); Behavioral: Customized Habit Tips; Behavioral: Weekly SMS Encouragement; Behavioral: Weekly SMS Support text; Behavioral: Persuasive education; Behavioral: Raffle Financial Incentive; Behavioral: Shared Pot Financial Incentive

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05469477

851411

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study team is proposing to conduct a randomized controlled trial to determine the effectiveness of behavioral and financial incentives on phone use while driving and seat belt adherence. Each arm will receive a support text if their app is not collecting data. The behavioral engagement intervention includes persuasive education, mental contrasting with implementation intentions, customized habit tips, weekly feedback about participants' streaks, and encouraging SMS texts. The two financial incentive interventions add on weekly raffles or shared pots for participants with perfect streaks.

Enrollment: 1,139 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Are a GM/OnStar customer.
• Are 18 or older.
• Meet minimum trip requirements.
• Uses vehicle with OnStar
• At least 5 weeks of baseline trip data with >=8 trips/week at baseline on average
• Baseline seat belt use <= 75% on trips less than 2 miles and <= 90 on trips greater than 2 miles
• English reading ability
• Have an email address
• Have a smartphone with iPhone iOS 12 or later or Android OS 7 or later

Exclusion criteria

• You are unable to read and understand English

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Factorial Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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1,139 participants in 4 patient groups

Control

Other group

Description:

Participants are asked to buckle up and not engage in handheld phone use while driving. No further messaging will be provided about their behavior, and participants will not receive financial incentives for avoiding risky driving behavior.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Support text

Behavioral Engagement

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive a multicomponent safer driving intervention based on behavioral science. This will include persuasive education, WOOP (mental contrasting with implementation intentions) and customized habit tips.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Support text

Behavioral: Persuasive education

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Encouragement

Behavioral: Customized Habit Tips

Behavioral: WOOP (aka, mental contrasting with implementation intentions., Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan)

Raffle incentive + behavioral engagement

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive the entire multicomponent safer driving behavioral intervention from arm 2. Participants will also be eligible for the Raffle Financial incentive, where participants can earn prize money for seat belt adherence and/or no phone use while driving.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Raffle Financial Incentive

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Support text

Behavioral: Persuasive education

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Encouragement

Behavioral: Customized Habit Tips

Behavioral: WOOP (aka, mental contrasting with implementation intentions., Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan)

Shared pot incentive + behavioral engagement

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive the entire multicomponent safer driving behavioral intervention from arm 2. This arm will be identical to Arm 3, except there will be a shared pot financial incentive instead of a raffle. Participants that abstain from phone use while driving and seat belt adherence earn an equal share of prize money allocated for the entire group.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Support text

Behavioral: Persuasive education

Behavioral: Shared Pot Financial Incentive

Behavioral: Weekly SMS Encouragement

Behavioral: Customized Habit Tips

Behavioral: WOOP (aka, mental contrasting with implementation intentions., Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan)