Assessing the Intention to Evade Fares for Demographic Segments of Passengers: Empirical Research in Italy for Building Smart(er) Cities

Evaluating Fare Evasion Risk in Bus Transit Networks

“…In addition, being between 18 and 26 years of age generates the largest contribution to the severity of fare evasion. This result confirms almost all previous research (Bucciol et al, 2013;Barabino et al, 2015;Delbosc and Currie, 2016b;Cools et al 2018;Barabino and Salis, 2020;Barabino et al, 2022;Cantillo et al, 2022) but not always (Eddy, 2010).…”

“…As for the intermediate socio-demographic factors, males practice 1.482 times more severe evasion than females. Although we investigated the severity as opposed to the likelihood or the intention to evade the fare, this result is consistent with past research (e.g., Bucciol et al, 2013; Barabino et al, 2015;Barabino and Salis, 2020;Barabino et al, 2022;Barabino and Salis, 2023;Cools et al 2018;Cantillo et al, 2022). The severity of fare evasion is a crucial issue in those younger than 26 years of age.…”

“…Indeed, being a worker increases the likelihood of a severe evasion by 1.417. Nevertheless, this result confirms the findings by Delbosc and Currie (2016b); however, it differs from those of Bucciol et al (2013), Barabino et al (2015), Barabino et al (2022). Although this result looks counterintuitive, it could be justified because workers travelling on a bus could be a low-income segment, which should be investigated further.…”

“…In (ii), other studies applied quantitative methods to understand the characteristics and patterns of fare evaders using intercept/on-board and web-based surveys. Data were mainly processed by descriptive statistics (Delbosc and Currie 2016b;Gonzalez et al, 2019;Busco et al, 2022), inferential statistics (Currie and Delbosc, 2017;Barabino and Salis, 2020;Barabino et al, 2022) and mixed statistics (Barabino and Salis, 2023).…”

“…Finally, unemployed passengers are likely to evade fares if they are young and captive males, are aware of the fine amount and were previously fined. Barabino et al (2022) showed that a past fine is the most frequent factor explaining whether a male, female, young, middle-aged or elderly passenger is more oriented towards fare evasion. Conversely, specific predictors characterise each segment.…”