Did Child Restraint Laws Globally Converge? Examining 40 Years of Policy Diffusion

Independent variables representing global factors were the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank's (WB) road safety global campaign; the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic; and the United Nation's (UN) 1958 Vehicle Agreement. Independent variables representing regional factors were the creation of the European Transport Safety Council and being a Commonwealth country. Independent variables representing national factors were population; gross domestic product (GDP) per capita; political violence; existence of road safety nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and existence of road safety agencies.

Urbanization served as a control variable. To examine regional dynamics, Weibull models for Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Commonwealth were also carried out. Results: Empirical estimates from full Weibull models suggest that 2 global factors and 2 national factors are significantly associated with the adoption of this measure.

The global factors explaining adoption are the WHO and WB's road safety global campaign implemented after 2004 ( P P P P P Conclusions: Results of the world models suggest that the WHO and WB's global road safety campaign was effective in disseminating ChRLs after 2004. Furthermore, regions such as Asia and Europe and North America were early adopters since specific regional and national characteristics anticipated the introduction of this policy before 2004.

In this particular case, the creation of the European Transport Safety Council was fundamental in promoting ChRLs. Thus, in order to introduce conditions to more rapidly diffuse road safety measures across lagging regions, the maintenance of global efforts and the creation of road safety regional organizations should be encouraged. Lastly, the case of ChRL convergence illustrates how mechanisms of global and regional diffusion need to be analytically differentiated in order better to assess the process of policy diffusion.