Understanding Risky Behavior in Sustainable Driving among Young Adults: Exploring Social Norms, Emotional Regulation, Perceived Behavioral Control, and Mindfulness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Introduction Section

Overall, this is very well written. 

- In the paragraph beginning on line 76 (page 2), briefly tell the reader a bit more about the gap in the current literature and how this study addresses that gap

- The 1.2 section of the paper (perception of social norms and risky driving behavior) feels a bit disjointed as it consists of short paragraphs that are marginally linked. Consider adding transition sentences between paragraphs to help the flow.

- The statement beginning with "Perception of being..." on page 3 (line 164) needs a citation.

- The 3 paragraphs beginning on line 214 of page 4 feel disjointed. Consider adding transition sentences between the paragraphs.

- Consider deleting the sentence beginning with "Aberrant driving behaviors" on line 232 (pg. 4) as it does not add to the discussion of mindfulness

- The Elander citation on page 5 (line 269) is quite dated. Consider updating to a more current citation. The citation is also incorrectly formatted as it stands.

Methods and Materials Section

- In the data analysis portion on page 7, the authors note that a pilot study was conducted to assess reliability. A bit more detail is needed on both reliability and validity as there are several types of each. Convince the      reader that the instruments actually measure what they're purported to measure.

- Please add more detail on the inclusionary/exclusionary criteria for the data.

- On page 8 the statement on line 470 ("Put differently...") is incorrect.     Variance is not a function of specific cases but of the distribution as whole. However, it was handled appropriately in the results. I would suggest only reporting the variance and omitting that statement.

- Data modeling appears appropriate, especially the mediation analysis. Nice job.

Discussion and Conclusion Section

- This section is also well written and appears to draw appropriate conclusions based on the data. The authors also took care to not over interpret conclusions. Limitations are reasonable.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall, the manuscript flows well with no notable English deficiencies. A general suggestion for improvement, particularly in the introduction section, is to better incorporate transition sentences between certain paragraphs.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper examines the explanatory power of a predictive model for risky driving behavior, including factors such as self-deceptive enhancement, impression management, emotional regulation difficulties, and perceived behavioral control. The following remarks should be considered in the revised version of the paper:

 

The literature review in the introduction should be synthesized and strengthened to avoid merely listing relevant studies. The authors should identify the literature gap and highlight the innovation of their study based on the reviewed literature. Additionally, the paper should address whether the sample size is sufficient for generalizable results, and also ensuring that the sample is equally distributed in terms of gender. Since the participants are predominantly young, this limitation should be noted, and it should be made clear that the study does not represent the entire population, including this in the title and abstract. The validation of the Romanian translation of the questionnaire should be discussed, and the sufficient Cronbach's Alpha coefficient should be specified. The sentence about “A pilot study was conducted to assess the reliability of the instruments with a sample of 33 drivers” should be discussed more thoroughly. The authors should also clarify the correlation method used and explain why Table 2 is empty. Finally, the discussion should include potential real-world applications of the study’s findings.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript should be reviewed by a native speaker to ensure that the language and phrasing are clear and accurate.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your recommendations regarding our study. We have followed all your suggestions and we have responded point by point. As follows:

1. The literature review in the introduction should be synthesized and strengthened to avoid merely listing relevant studies. The authors should identify the literature gap and highlight the innovation of their study based on the reviewed literature.

We have rewritten the introduction part in order to provide a clear synthesis of existing scientific literature, identifies the gaps, and enhances the discussion on the study's innovation and contributions, providing a robust foundation for the research.

2. Additionally, the paper should address whether the sample size is sufficient for generalizable results, and also ensuring that the sample is equally distributed in terms of gender.

To determine the minimum sample size required for testing the study hypothesis, an a priori power analysis was conducted using G*Power version 3.1.9.7. The analysis revealed that a sample size of N = 85 is needed to achieve 80% power for detecting a medium effect size at a significance level of α = .05 in a linear multiple regression model.

As regards the gender of participants, 23.90% were male, and 76.1% were female, which means 104 male participants and 332 female participants. Even though, the number of participants is not equally distributed, by gender variable, as we can see, the actual sample sizes of N_male = 104 and N_female = 332 are adequate for testing the study hypothesis. 

Regarding the generalization of the results to the entire population of drivers in Romania,

we must mention that the study did not aim for this objective, since the sampling method used was non-probabilistic and convenience-based, involving available participants in the research. At this stage of the research, we were interested in determining the existence of a relationship between the variables involved in the study. In the continuation of this study, we will also be interested in the degree of data generalization, but only after we have established the existence of a prior relationship between the variables involved.

3. Since the participants are predominantly young, this limitation should be noted, and it should be made clear that the study does not represent the entire population, including this in the title and abstract.

 

The mean age of the participants was M = 29.32, with a standard deviation of SD = 9.25. We have introduced the term "young adults" into the title and abstract. In addition, at the end of the article we explicitly mentioned that the data obtained in this research are not generalizable to the whole population, in terms of age, gender, education, driving experience and so on. 

4. The validation of the Romanian translation of the questionnaire should be discussed, and the sufficient Cronbach's Alpha coefficient should be specified. The sentence about “A pilot study was conducted to assess the reliability of the instruments with a sample of 33 drivers” should be discussed more thoroughly.

The concepts discussed in the present study were measured using specific instruments

that were pre-tested on Romanian participants. This process involved several steps, including translation and back-translation by bilingual experts, cultural adaptation, and pre-testing with a small sample. The translation was carefully reviewed to maintain the semantic and conceptual equivalence of the original items.

A pilot study was conducted to assess the reliability of the instruments using a sample of

33 drivers. This initial phase aimed to identify any issues with the translation, cultural relevance, and overall comprehension of the questionnaire items. Participants in the pilot study provided feedback on the clarity and relevance of the questions, which was then used to make necessary adjustments. The results from the pilot study showed satisfactory reliability indices, justifying the use of the instruments in the main study. Detailed analysis of the pilot study data confirmed that the translated questionnaires retained their psychometric properties, ensuring that the instruments were appropriate for the Romanian context.

The internal consistency of the translated questionnaire was assessed using Cronbach's

Alpha. The Cronbach's Alpha coefficients for the various scales were as follows: for the Risky Driving Behavior Scale, α = 0.84; for the Paulhus Deception Scales (Self-Deceptive Enhancement and Impression Management), α = 0.70 for both constructs; for the Internal Control Index, α = 0.79; for the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, α = 0.95; and for the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, α = 0.88. These coefficients indicate that the translated instruments have good to excellent reliability.

5. The authors should also clarify the correlation method used and explain why Table 2 is empty.

As indicated in the table below, the skewness and kurtosis values suggest that the data are

normally distributed. This means that we could use a Pearson correlation analysis.

Table 1

Descriptives of the measures involved in the study

The correlation matrix can be seen below.

Table 2

Correlations between Risky driving behaviors and study variables

Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6
1.  Risky driving behaviors	1	.193 ⃰ ⃰	-.325 ⃰ ⃰	.136 ⃰ ⃰	.081	-.237 ⃰ ⃰
2.  Self-deceptive enhancement		1	-.366 ⃰ ⃰	.606 ⃰ ⃰	.388 ⃰ ⃰	-.545 ⃰ ⃰
3.   Impression management			1	-375⃰⃰	-148 ⃰ ⃰	.455 ⃰ ⃰
4.   Difficulties in emotional regulation				1	.426 ⃰ ⃰	-.715 ⃰ ⃰
5.   Perceived behavioral control					1	-.428 ⃰ ⃰
6.   Mindfulness						1

N = 436, ⃰ p < 0.05, ⃰ ⃰ p < 0.01

6. Finally, the discussion should include potential real-world applications of the study’s findings.

The study’s findings can be applied in real-world contexts by developing mindfulness training programs for drivers to enhance emotional regulation and safer driving practices, designing educational campaigns that promote safe driving as socially desirable behavior to leverage impression management, creating gender-specific interventions addressing unique psychological factors influencing male and female drivers, incorporating psy-chological assessments into the driver licensing process to identify and support at-risk drivers, enhancing training programs for professional drivers by emphasizing mindful-ness and impression management, and developing advanced driver monitoring technologies that provide real-time feedback and interventions to maintain safe driving habits.

 

• The manuscript has been reviewed by a native English speaker to ensure that the vocabulary, syntax, grammar rules, and punctuation are clear and accurate.

We hope that we have addressed all your suggestions and look forward to your response.

Best wishes!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Should the term "awareness" be better defined in the text? The reviewer has an engineering background and experience in risk assessments for tractor drivers, which normally includes the analysis of the situational awareness of the (changing) contexts around machinery. This should also affect the adaptation of emotional responses, i.e. road rage in traffic. An idea could be understanding how context awareness could be described in table 2 as a study variable or at least be added to paragraph 1.7 as part of one of the variables.

Is the recent article "Mindfulness decreases driving anger expression: The mediating effect of driving anger and anger rumination" worth to be cited in this work? (10.1016/j.aap.2024.107642)

In conclusions section, could the model be further studied as a possible tool for detecting the conditions in which socio-technical variables (in work tasks, such as strict schedules, tightly-coupled subtasks, time constraints, etc) that trigger critical risky behaviours in drivers? This could be an interesting link with modern risk analysis methodologies.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your recommendations regarding our study. We have followed all your suggestions and we have responded point by point. As follows:

1. Should the term "awareness" be better defined in the text? The reviewer has an engineering background and experience in risk assessments for tractor drivers, which normally includes the analysis of the situational awareness of the (changing) contexts around machinery. This should also affect the adaptation of emotional responses, i.e. road rage in traffic. An idea could be understanding how context awareness could be described in table 2 as a study variable or at least be added to paragraph 1.7 as part of one of the variables.

 

Awareness, in the context of this study, refers to the driver's ability to recognize and understand their surroundings and the potential hazards that may arise while driving. This includes situational awareness, which is the perception of environmental elements and events concerning time or space, comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status. Situational awareness is critical for safe driving as it enables drivers to anticipate and respond appropriately to dynamic road conditions, thereby reducing the likelihood of risky driving behaviors.

And even though, some studies have shown that increasing drivers' awareness of their cognitive biases, such as optimism bias and illusion of control could potentially reduce risky driving behaviors (Măirean et al., 2022) or enhanced awareness and education significantly improve safe driving practices (Fylana & Stradling, 2014), for the current research we decided to use two other related concepts, mindfulness and emotional regulation difficulties, whose associations with risky driving behavior have been proven in multiple studies.  However, if we were to make a conceptual analysis of the three terms, we would think that: contextual awareness is the perception and understanding of dynamic environmental elements and events and their implications for current and future driving scenarios; emotional regulation is the ability to manage and respond to emotional experiences, particularly in stressful or provoking driving situations, such as road rage; and mindfulness is the quality of being conscious and aware of the present moment, aiding in better emotional regulation and decision-making while driving.

All in all, we appreciate this idea and also consider that contextual awareness is a crucial aspect that influences a driver's ability to adapt their emotional responses to changing contexts, such as traffic conditions, unexpected manoeuvres by other drivers, and road hazards. A higher level of situational awareness can help prevent incidents of road rage and other emotional responses that may lead to risky driving behavior. Therefore, incorporating situational awareness as a study variable can provide deeper insights into the psychological factors that contribute to safe driving practices.

We would very much like to use this variable in future research and consequently we have mentioned this in our article.

2. Is the recent article "Mindfulness decreases driving anger expression: The mediating effect of driving anger and anger rumination" worth to be cited in this work? (10.1016/j.aap.2024.107642)

We have just read the article you mentioned and we consider that by citing this recent work, we will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the role of mindfulness in reducing risky driving behaviors, thereby enhancing the overall impact and relevance of our study. Thank you very much!

3. In conclusions section, could the model be further studied as a possible tool for detecting the conditions in which socio-technical variables (in work tasks, such as strict schedules, tightly-coupled subtasks, time constraints, etc) that trigger critical risky behaviours in drivers? This could be an interesting link with modern risk analysis methodologies.

Related to this idea, we agree that future research could explore the model as a tool for detecting the conditions under which socio-technical variables, such as strict schedules, tightly-coupled subtasks, and time constraints, trigger critical risky behaviors in drivers. By integrating modern risk analysis methodologies, researchers can examine how these work-related factors interact with individual psychological traits to influence driving behavior, providing a comprehensive framework for developing targeted interventions. Organizations can use this model to identify high-risk scenarios and implement preventive measures, such as adjusting schedules to reduce time pressure or providing training to improve situational awareness and emotional regulation under stress. This approach can enhance the relevance of the model in real-world applications, particularly in professional driving contexts where socio-technical factors play a significant role. By linking the psychological predictors identified in our study with socio-technical variables, we can develop a more holistic understanding of the determinants of risky driving behavior and improve road safety through evidence-based interventions.

We hope that we have addressed all your suggestions and look forward to your response.

Best wishes!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have thoroughly and carefully revised the manuscript in response to the comments received during the review process. The revised manuscript has been improved and now meets the publication requirements of this journal. The only comment that was not addressed is the following: “Since the participants are predominantly young, this limitation should be noted, and it should be made clear that the study does not represent the entire population, including this in the title and abstract.”