Abstract
Injury risk behavior significantly increases the likelihood of unintentional injury. Researchers have advocated for a theory-guided inquiry into unintentional injury etiology for decades; however, to date, theory-guided research has not been sufficiently explored, especially in accounting for the unique nature of injury risk behavior as a spontaneous decision making process. The Decision Making-based Approach to Unintentional Injury Risk Behavior (DMAIRB) applied the essential elements of decision making to conceptually describe injury risk behavior as a naturalistic decision making process involving the spontaneous application of heuristics to estimate injury likelihood and to enact injury risk behaviors. The current study explored the application of availability heuristics in pedestrian crossing by examining the effect of ease of recall on estimated injury likelihood and behavior. Ease of recall was manipulated to elicit the recall of a few and many pedestrian injury-related factors. Recalling a few injury-related factors induced subjective ease whereas recalling more factors induced subjective difficulty. Results are discussed within the context of unintentional injury etiology and prevention.