A Comparative Study on Pedestrians' Intention to Violate Traffic Rules: The Case of China and Djibouti

Abstract

Crashes involving pedestrians account for a higher proportion of all road traffic crashes. So, in order to develop more effective safety measures, it is important to determine the causes of the crashes that involve pedestrians. This paper adopts an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to predict and explain pedestrians’ intention to violate traffic rules when crossing the road. In addition to the three traditional determinants of intention (instrumental attitude, Subjective norm and perceived behavioral control), this paper analyzes the effects of sensation seeking and conformity tendency on the intention to violate traffic rules while crossing the road. In order to analyze the relationships among the aforementioned variables, a survey was conducted in Dalian City (China) and Djibouti City (Djibouti), 452 participants from Dalian City and 828 participants from Djibouti City were interviewed. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that the instrumental attitude, the subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control positively affected the behavioral intention to violate traffic rules when crossing the road for both cities except for perceived behavioral control which was not significant for Dalian City. Conformity tendency and sensation seeking had a significant and positive impact on behavioral intention for Djibouti City. However, for Dalian City, conformity tendency significantly and positively affected the behavioral intention, but sensation seeking did not. Several empirical and practical implications were also discussed.