Anti‐social behaviour: profiling the lives behind road rage

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose that “social demarketing” campaigns need to recognize unique sub segments of individuals engaging in behaviours having substantial negative societal impacts.Design/methodology/approachVolume segmentation and extremely frequent behaviour theory is applied to examining several unique sub segments among survey data (n=6,393) of Americans not engaging and engaging in anti‐social behaviour (“giving‐the‐finger”) to other motorists while driving.FindingsLess than 2 percent of Americans are estimated to enact 40 percent of the total incidences of “giving‐the‐finger” to other motorists; three unique sub segments of the chronic anti‐social actors participate in different lifestyles (including media usage behaviours) and each has unique demographic profiles.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on two years of a national survey taken in one country and self‐reports only. The implications support the propositions of a general theory of extremely frequent consumption behaviour.Practical implicationsGovernment demarcating programs are likely to increase in effectiveness through tailoring a few strategies, rather than one, to influence unique segments of chronic anti‐social actors.Originality/valueThe paper provides individual‐level analysis of chronic anti‐social actors engaging in road‐rage related behaviours and compares them to one another as well as non‐equivalent comparison groups of actors not engaging in such behaviour; the paper describes the merits of experience frequency segmentation.