“I’ll never stop driving my child to school”: on multimodal and monomodal car users

• Published in: Transportation (Dordrecht) 2020-06, Vol.47 (3), p.1071-1102
• Main Authors: Mehdizadeh, Milad, Ermagun, Alireza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Behavior; Decision making models; Driving; Economic Geography; Economics; Economics and Finance; Engineering Economics; Field trips; Innovation/Technology Management; Logistics; Marketing; Multimodality; Norms; Organization; Parent attitudes; Parents & parenting; Psychological aspects; Psychological factors; Public transportation; Regional/Spatial Science; Safety; Social factors; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomics; Sustainable transportation; Transportation; Travel; Walking
• ISSN: 0049-4488; 1572-9435
• DOI: 10.1007/s11116-018-9949-5

This study investigates the behavior of multimodal and monomodal car users in school trips using 1 week of travel information of 735 Iranian students between 7 and 9 years old. We develop a hybrid choice model (HCM) and contribute to the literature of school trips by: (1) exploring the effects of latent psychological factors including parental attitudes, environmental norms, preferences, and concerns on multimodality behavior, (2) mediating the role of each psychological factor as a latent variable between socioeconomic variables and modal groups in an HCM-framework, and (3) contrasting the multimodality behavior in school trips with other trip purposes discussed in transportation literature. The results show (1) unfavorable attitudes toward safety and environment are positively associated with multimodal and monomodal car use among schoolchildren, (2) latent factors play a mediating role between socioeconomic variables and modal groups. For instance, boys are negatively related to a weaker priority of safety in transport, which indirectly influences multimodality or monomodality, and (3) unlike previous multimodality studies, the age of schoolchildren, car availability, and access to public transit are not found significant predictors of multimodal car use in school trips. We also indicate that a longer travel distance is negatively related to multimodality. The findings highlight that interventions including providing contextual preconditions for walking facilities, increasing parental personal norms about reducing car use, and increasing the safety and security of walking routes could increase monomodal sustainable transport use.