Predicting the effectiveness of anti-speeding TV advertisements by skin conductance response (SCR)

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the Hopkins and Fletcher (1994) ad-testing measure - which uses skin conductance response (SCR) to predict the effectiveness of sales messages for commercial products and services - would be similarly predictive for road safety ads. The predictive ability of SCR was tested on four pairs of anti-speeding ads using a behavioural dependent measure of speed choice. Overall, there was a weak correlation between SCR scores and speed choice scores (r = -.116, p < .10), and this was largely due to a strong correlation for one of the eight ads tested Further analysis showed that out of 16 possible comparisons of SCR scores and speed choice scores, by gender and ad, only two were found to be significantly correlated in the hypothesised direction. The Hopkins and Fletcher SCR ad-testing measure is not a dependable predictor of the effectiveness of antispeeding ads.