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Empowering the Bystander: The Role of Efficacy Beliefs in Guardianship

Weda, Ruud (2025) Empowering the Bystander: The Role of Efficacy Beliefs in Guardianship.

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Abstract:Despite declining crime rates in the Netherlands, public feelings of unsafety are on the rise, addressing the need for an increased understanding of what motivates bystanders to intervene in crime situations. Protection Motivation Theory was utilised to examine the effect of self-efficacy and response efficacy on willingness to intervene. Six different crime vignettes were developed for the experiment, each containing four conditions: control, self-efficacy, response efficacy, and both. The four answer options ranged from doing nothing to intervening, measuring willingness to intervene as an ordinal variable. Self-efficacy was found to significantly influence the likelihood of intervening, either alone or combined with response efficacy. Response efficacy itself did not show any significant effect. Additionally, the perceived realism of the vignettes increased the willingness to intervene. Overall, the findings illustrate that the belief in one’s capability outweighs the belief in the effectiveness of the action. This study illustrates that PMT is a useful extension to the already existing literature on guardianship. Future research should explore the role of response costs and adopt a more extensive design, entailing virtual reality and longitudinal research.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/107199
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