Smartphone use while driving: what factors predict young drivers' intentions to initiate, read, and respond to social interactive technology?

This study was guided by an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and identified factors that predict young, predominantly university student drivers' intentions to engage in initiating, monitoring/reading, and responding to social interactive technology (e.g., Facebook, email) on a smartphone. Participants (N = 114) were aged 17–25 years. The standard TPB constructs of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control were assessed in an online survey, as well as the additional predictors of anticipated regret, moral norm, mobile phone involvement, and cognitive capture. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed the standard constructs accounted for 67%, 56%, and 65% of variance in intentions to initiate, monitor/read, and respond, respectively, with the extended variables contributing additional variance. For initiating behaviour, for example, attitude, subjective norm, PBC, and cognitive capture all had significant, positive relationships with intention, while moral norm had a significant, negative relationship. For responding behaviour, attitude, subjective norm, PBC, and cognitive capture all had significant, positive relationships with intention, while anticipated action regret had a significant, negative relationship. These different combinations of significant predictors of intentions for each of the three behaviours (i.e., initiating, monitoring/reading, and responding) suggest that they may be distinct and require different public education message content to influence young drivers’ behaviours.