Incentivizing Distraction: The Impact of Performance-Based Incentives on Secondary Task Engagement
To reduce the number of distraction related crashes, it is important to understand how secondary tasks affect driver behavior. While much can be learned from observational approaches, controlled experimental studies will play a crucial role in understanding distraction. To that end, it is important that drivers be motivated to engage with secondary tasks in experimental studies, as they would in the real world. Task-contingent incentives, where drivers are compensated at least in part for secondary task performance or engagement, have frequently been used to increase motivation to engage in secondary tasks during driving studies. However, little research has actually tested whether such incentives actually alter secondary task engagement. This study compared two task-based incentive methods with a baseline condition to examine the effects of incentives on secondary task engagement in a high-fidelity driving simulator. There was no evidence to suggest that drivers engaged differently with the secondary task in the incentive conditions. While this study explored only a subset of possible incentive methods, the results cast doubt onto the efficacy of using incentives to increase secondary task engagement in the context of driving experiments.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND10 Standing Committee on Vehicle User Characteristics.
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Corporate Authors:
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Authors:
- Gaspar, John G
- Brown, Timothy
- Marshall, Dawn C
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 17p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Behavior; Distraction; Driving simulators; Motivation; Workload
- Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01626392
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-05810
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 23 2017 2:56PM