Behavior Change Without Belief Change? Evidence From Traffic Safety Compliance in Regulated Urban Contexts

Background Helmet and seatbelt compliance remains inconsistent in rapidly urbanising cities despite widespread awareness of traffic safety regulations. Social marketing interventions addressing such behaviours often prioritise belief and attitude change, assuming that cognitive alignment is necessary for sustained compliance. However, routinised and legally regulated behaviours may also be shaped by situational, structural, and enforcement-related cues. Focus of the Article This study examines whether traffic safety compliance can occur without contemporaneous differences in instrumental safety beliefs, focusing on the role of observed enforcement visibility in high-density urban traffic contexts. Research Question Is visible traffic enforcement associated with higher pooled observed traffic-safety compliance independently of differences in instrumental safety beliefs among urban commuters? Importance to the Social Marketing Field The study highlights a limitation of belief-centred social marketing models in regulated contexts by showing that compliance may be higher under visible enforcement even when instrumental safety beliefs show no corresponding statistically detectable difference. The findings support a more context-sensitive understanding of social marketing in regulated, habitual, and publicly observable behaviours. Methods A comparative field study was conducted across high- and low-enforcement traffic corridors in two major Indian cities. Roadside observations and intercept surveys were combined, with hypothesis testing conducted on a matched sample of 576 participants. Observed enforcement visibility was measured using a site–time-block Enforcement Visibility Index (EVI) across 96 observation windows, and respondent-level models used observation-window-clustered standard errors. Results Observed compliance was significantly higher in high-enforcement than low-enforcement conditions, whereas no statistically detectable difference in instrumental safety beliefs was observed. EVI was a significant positive predictor of compliance and was significantly stronger than instrumental safety beliefs in predicting observed compliance. Instrumental safety beliefs were not independently associated with compliance. Recommendations for Research or Practice Social marketing interventions targeting traffic safety should integrate belief-focused communication with situational and structural levers, including enforcement visibility, place-based cues, legitimacy-building messages, and context-sensitive reminders. Limitations The comparative field design and corridor-level sampling limit causal inference. Future research should examine longitudinal effects, test integrated enforcement–communication interventions and identify the mechanisms through which enforcement visibility influences compliance.