2016 Volume 4 Issue 1 Pages 46-51
Existing literature on the psychological approach to traveler's mode choice behavior has underlined two main streams of traveler motivation for using transport mode. Those are self-interest motive and pro-environmental motive. Travelers are assumed to consider cost-benefit mechanism when deciding on mode choice in the self-interest motive, whereas environmental obligation has been cited for deciding travelers' behavior with respect to the pro-environmental motive. Self-interest-based models were commonly found to be better compared to pro-environmental-based models in predicting travelers' behavior; however, conventional studies seem to ignore the important role of trip purposes towards travelers' mode-choice behavior. This study, therefore, aims at investigating travelers' mode-choice motive under different trip purposes. Results from 270 respondents in Saitama City, Japan, showed that travelers have different motives according to different trip purposes. In particular, travelers use cost-benefit perception to decide on bus use when going to work and going shopping. Regarding intention to take the bus to go to social events, travelers' perception were found to be driven by social-environmental obligation. Further efforts on combined models which integrate both self-interest motives and pro-environmental motives, suggested that travelers do not completely ignore pro-environmental motives in self-interest trips.