Sociodemography, Geography, and Personality as Determinants of Car Driving and Use of Public Transportation

Abstract

To address the sustainability challenges related to travel behavior, technological innovations will not be enough. Behavioral changes are also called for. The aim of the present study is to examine the influence of sociodemography, geography, and personality on car driving and use of public transportation. Sociodemographic factors have been defined by age, gender, income, and education. Geographic factors have been studied through residential area (e.g., rural and urban areas). Personality has been studied through the Five-Factor-Model of personality—degree of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The analysis is based on a survey with 1812 respondents, representative for the Swedish population. Regarding sociodemographic factors, car driving is explained by being male, higher age, higher income, while use of public transportation is explained by lower age and higher education. The user profile of a car driver is the opposite to that of a public transport passenger when it comes to geographic factors; urban residential area explains public transportation while rural area explains car driving. Some personality factors are also opposites; a low degree of Openness and a high degree of Extraversion explain car driving, while a high degree of Openness and a low degree of Extraversion explain use of public transportation. Moreover, car driving is explained by a low degree of Neuroticism, while use of public transportation is explained by a low degree of Conscientiousness and a high degree of Agreeableness. Since sociodemography, geography, and personality influence how people process information and evaluate market propositions (e.g., products and services), the findings presented here are useful for policymakers and transportations planners who would like to change behavior from car driving to public transportation use. Caution should be taken in interpreting the relationship between personality traits and transportation modes, since the personality traits are measured by a short scale (i.e., Big Five Inventory (BFI)-10), with limitations in the factor structure for a representative sample of the Swedish population.

Traits and Transports: The Effects of Personality on the Choice of Urban Transport Modes

“…A nationally representative study of the Swedish population reports that car driving is influenced by a low degree of Openness, a high degree of Extraversion and a low degree of Neuroticism [23]. The same study reported that use of public transportation is influenced by a high degree of Openness and Agreeableness, and a low degree of Conscientiousness and Extraversion [23].…”

“…A nationally representative study of the Swedish population reports that car driving is influenced by a low degree of Openness, a high degree of Extraversion and a low degree of Neuroticism [23]. The same study reported that use of public transportation is influenced by a high degree of Openness and Agreeableness, and a low degree of Conscientiousness and Extraversion [23]. In contrast, a study on the Big Five personality traits and use of public transportation in Tehran (Iran) reports that use of public transportation is positively related to Extraversion and negatively related to Neuroticism [1].…”

“…The different results can be explained by different samples. The first study represents the Swedish population based on choice of modes of transport in everyday life [23]. The respondents in the second study are departure passengers waiting at the check-in lounge, Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, Iran.…”

“…Car driving is positively related to age, being male, income, having children at home and rural residential areas with low population density [18,22,23,31]. Use of public transportation is positively related to being female and urban residential areas with high population density, while negatively related to age and income [1,3,22,23,31,32]. Cycling is positively related to being male [33] and negatively related to age [25].…”

“…Age, gender, income, children at home and residential area were used as control variables. The reasons for this were that pervious research has shown that these variables are related to personality [17,23,[26][27][28][29][30] and choice of transport mode [1,3,22,23,25,[31][32][33].…”