Impacts of travellers' social awareness on the intention of bus usage

Abstract

The literature on psychological studies includes numerous documented efforts to explain traveller behaviour under the pro-environmental approach. However, this approach was found to perform weakly compared to the self-interest approach. A review of the pro-environmental approach showed that the existing pro-environmental models generally discussed travellers' mode-use obligation under a narrow background of environmental awareness. This would probably lead to results showing no difference in mode-use obligation between private vehicles, which have environmental concerns, and public vehicles, which have both social and environmental concerns. In addition, findings of non-mode-choice studies have suggested that awareness of social value would likely be involved in deciding pro-environmental behaviour. As such, it was suggested that social-awareness factors may influence travellers' obligations to transportation modes. However, it was surprising that the literature on mode-use behaviour showed few efforts aimed at the impacts of social-awareness factors on travellers' mode-use behaviour. This study, therefore, provided an examination of the necessity of expanding travellers' mode-use obligations towards social-awareness aspect by considering various social awareness factors in the mode-use model. Empirical results from 333 respondents in Hidaka City, Japan, showed support for the expansion of the travellers' obligations through observation of novel social-awareness factors, including social-awareness of consequences and perceived service interruption, as predictors of bus use intention.

Keywords

• Social awareness
• User perception
• Bus service