Bystander Intervention in Domestic Violence: Evaluating Social Marketing Campaigns

Abstract

Up to one-third of domestic violence incidents involve witnesses. Bystanders play a significant role when it comes to reporting the incidents to authorities, but are often hesitant to get involved in domestic disputes. In this review paper, 11 social marketing campaigns that encourage bystander intervention against domestic violence are evaluated in relation to Latané and Darley’s (1970) model of the bystander decision making process. The evaluation shows that these social marketing campaigns are sometimes contradictory or ambiguous, which may limit their effectiveness.