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Explaining public transport information use when a car is available: attitude theory empirically investigated

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Abstract

Despite recent investments in and growing availability of various public transport information services, levels of apparent non-use (of particular information services) across the population remain high. Policymakers and information service providers could benefit from a better understanding of factors affecting information use. The goal of this paper is to provide more insight into the (non-)use of public transport information by applying attitude theory. A postal survey was sent to a random sample of 10,000 households in Bristol and Manchester, UK. The response rate was 13%. Respondents were questioned about an uncertain journey they were going to make. Structural equation modelling has been used to investigate interdependencies among the factors studied. The results show that the desire to consult public transport information for an uncertain journey is affected by attitudes, subjective norms, and past behaviour. These social-psychological factors are in turn affected by constraints such as travel behaviour and trip context. Crucially in terms of addressing issues of non-use of information it is found that consulting information is influenced by propensity to consider using public transport rather than vice versa as has hitherto been implicitly assumed by many involved in the provision of transport and information services.

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Notes

  1. See: http://www.9292ov.nl/, http://www.transportdirect.info/, http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/, http://www.511.org/

  2. The EMGB uses the wider concept of ‘volition’ (encompassing among other things the effort needed to enact a certain behaviour) instead of ‘intention’ (Perugini and Conner 2000). Also, behavioural desire (motivation to act) is expected to precede volition. However, discriminant validity tests showed no distinction between behavioural desire and volition in our data. Therefore, we do not distinguish between the two constructs and use the term ‘intention’ instead.

  3. Concerning work trips; the role of employers in stimulating public transport use is discussed further down in the results section and the conclusions.

  4. The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) is based on chi-square values and measures the discrepancy between observed and predicted values per degree of freedom. A good model has an RMSEA value of less than 0.05.

  5. The direction of causality seems to be more likely as described above than the other way round: because one thinks that consulting PT information in planning this journey would be useful, one might consider travelling by public transport.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is based upon a 3-year study which forms part of the FUTURES programme in the UK (Future Urban Technologies: Undertaking Research to Enhance Sustainability) that is funded by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council). The authors wish to thank Professor Marco Perugini (Faculty of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca) and Professor Mark Conner (Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds) for their useful remarks concerning the questionnaire. Dr Anne Boomsma (Department of Sociology, University of Groningen) is thankfully acknowledged for his helpful comments regarding the data analysis.

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  1. Centre for Transport & Society (CTS), University of the West of England (UWE), Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK

    Sendy Farag & Glenn Lyons

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  1. Sendy Farag
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  2. Glenn Lyons
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Correspondence to Sendy Farag.

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Farag, S., Lyons, G. Explaining public transport information use when a car is available: attitude theory empirically investigated. Transportation 37, 897–913 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-010-9265-1

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