"protective motivation" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It refers to a person's internal drive or desire to protect themselves or others from harm, danger, or negative outcomes. One could use this phrase in a sentence like, "The young mother's protective motivation kicked in when she saw a speeding car heading towards her child." This suggests that her natural instinct to protect her child motivated her to act quickly in order to prevent harm.
Protective motivation theory.
People can either control the danger elicited by the threat by making a positive and conscious shift in attitude and behaviour (called protective motivation or danger control responses).
Lack of perceived threat, absence of protective motivation, inadequate knowledge, perceived lack of control, negative attitudes towards condom and misperception were the major personal barriers, while unsupportive environments and cultural norms were the common socio-environmental barriers to condom use among these at risk women.
The protection motivation theory posits that health-protective actions are influenced by risk perceptions (6 – 8 ).
Protection motivation theory has been used to predict protective health behaviours.
The theory outlines two cognitive mediating processes forming a threat and a coping appraisal, respectively; these two processes combine to form protection motivation or an intention to perform a protective behaviour.
However, the protection motivation theory explicitly states that higher risk perceptions will only predict protective behavior when people believe that effective protective actions are available (response efficacy) and that they have the ability to engage in such protective actions (self-efficacy).
Based on health-behaviour models such as the Health Belief Model [ 10] or Protection Motivation Theory [ 11] crisis communication campaigns usually have a strong focus on providing information and knowledge about risks and protective behaviours.
Self-efficacy deals specifically with the question of, "am I able to respond effectively?" whereas ascription of responsibility asks, "am I responsible for responding?" The failure of respondents to recognize the significance of this variable (Table 2) serves to highlight the need for incorporating ascription of responsibility measures into protective behavior motivation studies.
If, as Dweck and her colleagues have suggested, an incremental theory of ability can serve a protective function for students' motivation and achievement, it would benefit researchers and educators to know what the sources of such a belief are.
As we speculate that maternal smoking is unlikely to be truly protective, these findings motivated our exploration of more objective measurement of exposure, and our findings reinforce that motivation.
