Behavioral, emotional and physiological consequences and possible interventions to reduce work stress in younger and older professional drivers

• Applicant: Dr. Melanie Karthaus
• Subject Area: Human Factors, Ergonomics, Human-Machine Systems
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 520637531

Professional drivers are exposed to high levels of stress in their daily work due to continuous time pressure and difficult working conditions with little action control, which can increase the risk of stress-related illnesses and early retirement. In view of the Europe-wide shortage of skilled workers among professional drivers in freight transport, it appears necessary to make their work more attractive, safer and healthier in order to maintain the work ability of professional drivers into old age. In the project, work-related stress and individual coping strategies of professional drivers in specific driving situations will be related to general working conditions, personal characteristics and health-relevant physiological parameters. Moreover, various interventions for improving these subjective and objective parameters will be investigated. In study 1, an online survey of professional drivers will be used to investigate job-specific stress factors, individual working conditions, health status, and the subjective experience and handling of stressful work situations. The aim is to identify different types of drivers who differ, for example, in their stress management strategies. Based on this, study 2 will investigate the effects of typical work stress situations and driving stress in the driving simulator. For this purpose, professional drivers drive a given route, in which stress is systematically varied by manipulating the complexity of the route and the time pressure. Behavioral (driving behavior) as well as subjective (experience, emotions) and physiological (ECG, EEG, cortisol) data are collected. Based on this, study 3 will investigate different behavioral preventive intervention approaches (physical activity/sport, relaxation technique, cognitive reappraisal of the stress-inducing situation) to reduce the stress response in the driving simulator in three intervention groups. In a pre/post design, the effectiveness of the interventions on behavioral, subjective and physiological parameters will be tested against each other as well as against a control group with regard to possible changes caused by the individual interventions, including relevant situation and person characteristics. Finally, the knowledge gained in the project will be used to develop organizational and individual measures and to derive recommendations that can contribute to maintaining the health and work ability of professional drivers.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants