IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aim/wpaimx/1546.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

"Your Money or Your Life !" The Influence of Injury and Fine Expectations on Helmet Adoption among Motorcyclists in Delhi

Author

Abstract

Road mortality is a growing burden in many developing countries, although many of these crashes are preventable. Behaviors adopted by road users while traveling is one key dimension on which governments usually play to reduce road accidents, either by stressing the potential injuries or by implementing fines if individuals do not adopt safe behaviors. This paper exploits original data collected among Delhi motorcyclists in 2011. I study the influence of perceived consequences of helmet non-use on the decision whether to wear or not such protective device. I also explore the role of previous experiences in the formation of these beliefs. I find that expected injuries are correlated with helmet use on long distance trips while expectations of financial sanctions are linked with helmet adoption on short distance journeys. Women react more than men to a given level of expected medical expenditures. Furthermore, poorer individuals are more likely to use a helmet for given levels of health costs and traffic fines. Simulations of policies influencing individuals' subjective expectations show that an intensification of police threat and information campaigns would increase helmet adoption among motorcyclists.

Suggested Citation

  • Carole Treibich, 2015. ""Your Money or Your Life !" The Influence of Injury and Fine Expectations on Helmet Adoption among Motorcyclists in Delhi," AMSE Working Papers 1546, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised 16 Nov 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1546
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/files/_dt/2012/wp_2015_-_nr_46.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    2. McKenzie, David & Gibson, John & Stillman, Steven, 2013. "A land of milk and honey with streets paved with gold: Do emigrants have over-optimistic expectations about incomes abroad?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 116-127.
    3. Grimm, Michael & Treibich, Carole, 2016. "Why do some motorbike riders wear a helmet and others don’t? Evidence from Delhi, India," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 318-336.
    4. Akerlof, George A & Dickens, William T, 1982. "The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 307-319, June.
    5. Michael P. Haselhuhn & Devin G. Pope & Maurice E. Schweitzer & Peter Fishman, 2012. "The Impact of Personal Experience on Behavior: Evidence from Video-Rental Fines," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 52-61, January.
    6. Orazio P. Attanasio, 2009. "Expectations and Perceptions in Developing Countries: Their Measurement and Their Use," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 87-92, May.
    7. Delavande, Adeline & Giné, Xavier & McKenzie, David, 2011. "Measuring subjective expectations in developing countries: A critical review and new evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 151-163, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grimm, Michael & Treibich, Carole, 2016. "Why do some motorbike riders wear a helmet and others don’t? Evidence from Delhi, India," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 318-336.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcus Böhme, 2015. "Migration and educational aspirations – Another channel of brain gain?," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-24, December.
    2. Lekfuangfu, Warn N., 2022. "Mortality risk, perception, and human capital investments: The legacy of landmines in Cambodia," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Zelalem Yilma & Owen O’Donnell & Anagaw Mebratie & Getnet Alemu & Arjun S. Bedi, 2018. "Subjective Expectations of Medical Expenditures and Insurance in Rural Ethiopia," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Health Econometrics, volume 127, pages 23-55, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    4. Kim, Jinho, 2016. "The effect of peers on HIV infection expectations among Malawian adolescents: Using an instrumental variables/school fixed effect approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 61-69.
    5. Orazio Attanasio & Katja Kaufmann, 2009. "Educational Choices, Subjective Expectations, and Credit Constraints," NBER Working Papers 15087, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Adams-Prassl, Abigail & Andrew, Alison, 2019. "Preferences and Beliefs in the Marriage Market for Young Brides," CEPR Discussion Papers 13567, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Romuald Meango & Esther Mirjam Girsberger, 2023. "Identification of Ex ante Returns Using Elicited Choice Probabilities: an Application to Preferences for Public-sector Jobs," Papers 2303.03009, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    8. McKenzie, David, 2016. "Can Business Owners Form Accurate Counterfactuals? Eliciting Treatment and Control Beliefs about Their Outcomes in the Alternat," CEPR Discussion Papers 11280, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Attanasio, Orazio P. & Kaufmann, Katja M., 2014. "Education choices and returns to schooling: Mothers' and youths' subjective expectations and their role by gender," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 203-216.
    10. Alok Kumar, 2019. "Subjective Income Expectations and Risks in Rural India," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 53(3), pages 11-25, Summer.
    11. Orazio Attanasio & Britta Augsburg, 2016. "Subjective Expectations and Income Processes in Rural India," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(331), pages 416-442, July.
    12. Kai Barron, 2021. "Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 31-58, March.
    13. Beam, Emily A., 2021. "Search costs and the determinants of job search," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    14. Áureo De Paula & Gil Shapira & Petra E. Todd, 2014. "How Beliefs About Hiv Status Affect Risky Behaviors: Evidence From Malawi," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 944-964, September.
    15. Delavande, Adeline & Giné, Xavier & McKenzie, David, 2011. "Measuring subjective expectations in developing countries: A critical review and new evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 151-163, March.
    16. Nuarpear Lekfuangfu, 2016. "Mortality Risk and Human Capital Investment: The Legacy of Landmines in Cambodia," PIER Discussion Papers 35., Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research, revised Jul 2016.
    17. Gil Shapira, 2017. "How Subjective Beliefs about HIV Infection Affect Life-Cycle Fertility: Evidence from Rural Malawi," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(3), pages 680-718.
    18. Luis Fernando Gamboa & Paul Andrés Rodríguez-Lesmes, 2018. "Subjective Earnings and Academic Expectations of Tertiary Education in Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 36(86), pages 159-177, June.
    19. Riccardo Scarpa & Claudia Bazzani & Diego Begalli & Roberta Capitello, 2021. "Resolvable and Near‐epistemic Uncertainty in Stated Preference for Olive Oil: An Empirical Exploration," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(2), pages 335-369, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    subjective expectations; road safety; risky behaviors; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1546. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gregory Cornu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/amseafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.