The Effectiveness of Emotional Appeals in Encouraging Helmet Use Among E-Scooter Riders

Abstract

This paper explores how persuasion with appeals to emotions can be used to encourage the use of helmets among e-scooter users, a safety behavior that is important but commonly overlooked. Through a randomized controlled experiment involving 80 participants, this research evaluates the effectiveness of an emotionally charged poster that underscores the dangers of riding without a helmet compared to a neutral, non-persuasive image. The degree to which participants perceived the utility of different measures – clarity, influence, and intention to wear helmets was measured by a Likert scale. Statistical analysis revealed that the emotional appeal significantly enhanced positive attitudes and intentions toward helmet use, with all evaluated metrics showing marked improvements in the experimental group over the control group (p < 0.001). The results emphasize how effective emotional messaging is at changing safety behaviors and back its wider use in public health campaigns that encourage helmet use among users of e-scooters.