Willingness to change compulsory trips to bicycle: Role of habit, perceptions and the built environment

Abstract

We study the roles of habit, the perception of insecurity, and the built environment in the willingness to change to cycling for compulsory trips in Santiago, Chile. Data from an innovative stated choice survey to current non-users of the bicycle (who had previously declared that they might change to bicycle on their regular trips) allowed us to estimate a hybrid latent class discrete choice model incorporating habit, insecurity and having a pro-environment attitude as latent constructs. The approach allowed us to detect significant heterogeneity in behaviour depending on the city’s location and the participant’s income level. Our results confirm that trip distance plays a preponderant role in potential bicycle choice but also affects the perception of insecurity and the habit strength; in the case of shorter trips, it seems more feasible to break the habit associated with the current mode used, increasing the willingness to switch to bicycle for regular trips. Our results also confirm the importance of having cycleways available to increase the potential switch to bicycles and show the importance of having a pro-environmental attitude. Unlike previous studies, we succeeded in associating trip attributes and built environment variables among the factors explaining habit and insecurity, allowing us to examine the effects of these intangible attributes in mode switching. Finally, we estimate subjective values of time (SVT), finding significant variations by class and type of infrastructure. In particular, there is a consistently higher perceived disutility of cycling time for higher-income individuals. However, having cycling infrastructure available reduces the SVT for both classes significantly.