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| Home : Travel and Leisure : Travel : Hitch-hiking by Bernd Wechner   |
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Experiments in Hitch-hiking: What works best?
Author: Bernd Wechner Last year I marveled openly at the lack of research into hitch-hiking, given its ubiquity and how passionately opinionated people seem to be on the subject - it's either the greatest thing out or a certain suicide. Often people wonder just how well it works. How many people actually pull over? Or, better said, what portion of passing cars pulls over? There was a period, from 1966 to 1975 where the diligent student will find a handful of studies that either set out to answer just this question or used hitch-hikers to study another (related) question. Not many, eight in all, made their way into my hands over recent years, three of which remained unpublished (and hence somewhat hard to find). I'd be pleased to learn of more, but for the moment this looks like all we have. Extracts from a golden age so to speak, when a handful of people took the subject seriously enough to conduct and report on some experiments using hitch-hikers as bait and drivers as quarry. They are: Baugher, Bob, 1974; unpublished personal letter. Bryan, James H., 1966; Helping and Hitchhiking, unpublished manuscript, Princeton, New Jersey. Clifford, Margaret M. and Cleary Paul, 1971; The Odds on Hitchhiking, unpublished manuscript, Wisconsin Crassweller Peter, et. al., 1972; “An Experimental Investigation of Hitchhiking”, The Journal of Psychology 82, pp. 43-47. Morgan, Charles J. et. al., 1975; “Hitch-hiking – Social Signals at a Distance”, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 5, pp. 459-461. Pomazal, Richard J. and Clore, Gerald L., 1973; “Helping on the Highway: the effects of dependency and sex”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 3, pp. 150-164. Snyder, Mark et. al., 1974; “Staring and Compliance: a field experiment in hitchhiking”, Journal of Applied Psychology 4, pp. 165-170. Tobin, Nona and Sexton, Sam, 1972; Attitudes toward and the effects of physical variables on hitchhiking, unpublished masters thesis, California State University, San Jose. I'd like to summarise just what these researchers did and their results. The studies are diverse, were executed in diverse locations and yielded a wide range of results. All but one researcher recorded the proportion of cars which pulled over (counting ride offers and passing cars). The one exception, Bryan, didn't count passing cars, but watched the clock (measured wait times). Tables 1-4 below summarises the results and practices succinctly.
Notes: ? implies the location of the experiments is inferred not documented. Morgan et al. conducted a preliminary study for which they reported results but failed to document the experimental conditions. Table 2. Min is the minimum success rate of hitch-hikers among the trials conducted and Max is the maximum success rate. Min and Max condition summarise the conditions of the trial which recorded the minimum and maximum success rates. For interpretation consult Table 3 below.
Notes: Variables is the number variables which were studied. Conditions is how many unique combinations of those variables were trialed. Trials per condition is how many trials were conducted for each condition. Trials is the total number of trials. Duration of trial is how long each trial lasted. Total is how long the whole experiment lasted (in hours, ride offers or passing vehicles). Summary In summary then, of 8 studies we can trace, conducted between 1966 and 1975 (no-one since seems to have displayed any interested in the matter), the hitch-hiking success rate was recorded between 0.9% and 36% (that's between roughly 1 car in 100 and 1 in 3). The highest rate of success (36%) recorded was for a lone female hitching a ride beside car parked by the side of the highway near Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The lowest rate (0.9%) of success recorded was for a lone male in business clothing hitching a ride from downtown San Jose, California during the day. Experimenters examined between 1 and 4 of the following variables: They examined between 2 and 24 distinct conditions (combinations of these variables) and conducted between 1 and 20 trials per condition for a total of between 8 and 320 trials. Three types of trial were conducted with durations ranging as follows: They recorded between 1 and 8 of the following observations: These studies can be made available to anyone upon request. Just contact me with an expression of interest. They form an excellent basis for modern day comparative studies - do we still see between 1/100 and 1/3 cars pulling over for downtown businessmen and women in distress? And if not, how do 21st century hitch-hiking success rates compare? Published Read the Related Discussion E-mail this Article to a Friend
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