Conceptualizing and measuring community road-safety climate

This study applies the safety-climate concept to road safety and proposes a new concept - community road-safety climate. To date, safety climate has been a measure of a formal organizational unit and a valid predictor of unit members' behavior and unit outcomes. However, many drivers do not drive when at work, so that organizations have only limited influence on road safety. We suggest that the community level adds value to the organizational level of analysis in climate research and can improve understanding of road-safety behavior. We conducted a qualitative interview-based study (n = 61) in order to explore community influence on road safety and develop a safety-climate scale; and a quantitative questionnaire-based study (n = 132) to test that scale. In both studies we found evidence of a community-level road-safety climate, and that this concept is particularly relevant in the case of geographical communities.