Incivility awareness could save lives

abstract:We introduce the idea of deterring undesirable behaviors by raising incivility awareness—sensitivity to when one is violating norms of civil behavior. We demonstrate that this approach is effective in deterring pedestrians from crossing intersections at red lights, which is a serious worldwide safety problem. In three field experiments conducted at urban intersections (involving more than 12,000 total observations), we found that posting signs raising pedestrians' incivility awareness significantly reduced red-light crossing rates. We also found that the incivility-awareness message of "Crossing at the red light is uncivil" made those signs more effective than signs with messages that emphasized the importance of not crossing at a red light ("Don't cross at the red light"), civil behavior ("Waiting for the green light is civil"), safety ("Waiting for the green light is good for safety"), and danger ("Crossing at the red light is bad for safety").