Revision and validation of the driver psychological resilience scale and its relationship with driving anger

Psychological resilience is an important psychological factor associated with traffic safety; however, validated resilience measures specifically designed for drivers remain limited. This study adapted the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and examined its psychometric properties to develop a driver-specific version (CD-RISC-D) for the Chinese driving context. A total of 996 valid questionnaires were collected from drivers across 32 provinces in China, including 42.6% professional drivers. The data were randomly divided into two subsamples: Sample 1 (n = 498) was used for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and parallel analysis, and Sample 2 (n = 498) was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Based on conservation of resources theory and the general aggression model, this study further examined whether psychological resilience mediated the association between driving experience and driving anger. Results indicated that the revised scale consisted of two dimensions, tenacity and optimism, with acceptable reliability and preliminary evidence of validity. Mediation analysis indicated that psychological resilience showed an indirect-only mediation effect in the association between driving experience and driving anger. In addition, significant differences in psychological resilience were observed across gender, driver type, and driving experience. This study provides a driver-specific resilience scale with preliminary psychometric evidence and contributes to understanding the role of psychological resilience in traffic safety research.