Psychological Factors Affecting Intention to Use Public Transport among Vietnamese Motorcyclists

Abstract

Previous studies on factors influencing public transport usage have mainly focused on car users and been conducted in the Western world. In contrast, there are few studies on modal choice in motorcycle- dominant countries like Vietnam. This paper contributes to the state of the art by investigating data from 618 Vietnamese motorcyclists to understand psychological factors that influence the intention to use public transport among Vietnamese motorcyclists. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation model (SEM) are employed to explore psychological factors influencing public transport mode choice in Vietnam and to test the relationship between these psychological factors and the intention to use public transport. The results show that in addition to other factors in the theory of planned behavior (TPB), such as personal norms and perceived behavioral control, attitudes toward public transport mode choice are formulated from three components: instrumental attitude, symbolic/affective attitude, and social orderliness attitude. In addition, the SEM result also shows that only personal norms and social orderliness have a direct relationship with the intention to use public transport among five psychological factors. The findings from this paper have contributed both theoretical and empirical value to the existing literature in this field.