Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Transportation Research Part A journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tra The effect of attitudes toward cars and public transportation on behavioral intention in commuting mode choice—A comparison across six Asian countries Hong Tan Van a,⇑, Kasem Choocharukul b, Satoshi Fujii c a Department of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, 268 Ly Thuong Kiet District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Department of Civil Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand c Department of Urban Management, Kyoto University, C1-2, Katsura Campus, Kyoto, Japan b a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received November 2008 Received in revised form August 2014 Accepted 12 August 2014 Keywords: Attitudes toward travel modes Commuting mode choice Mobility management Psychological methods a b s t r a c t This study investigated the contribution of psychological factors in explaining the choice of transportation mode in six Asian countries Data were collected from 1118 respondents in Japan, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines The dependent variable was the intention to use one of three modes for work travel after getting a job: car, public transit, or other modes The explanatory variables were three attitude factors taken from a previous study, including: 1/symbolic affective, reflecting affective motives of travel mode use; 2/instrumental, referring to functional attributes of travel modes; and 3/social orderliness which represents for environmental friendliness, safety, altruism, quietness et cetera Several logit model estimates were made using the samples from the six countries separately and together We obtained three main findings First, attitude variables about the car were all significant determinants for the entire sample from Asian countries Second, the social orderliness aspect of public transit was a common concern of respondents from developing countries in selecting this mode for work trips Third, in countries in which the intent to use a car was not very high, attitude factors about the car were found to be significant determinants of the behavioral intention to commute by car but were less significant in countries in which the desire to use a car was high Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved Introduction Newly industrialized countries in Asia are experiencing rapid economic growth and urbanization, resulting in soaring travel demand in many large cities (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 2004; Poverty and Development Division, 2006) The increases in income and standard of living in urban areas are followed by the increased trend in car use (Hayashi et al., 2004) In fact, recent figures showed that the rates of increase in car ownership in some developing Asian cities are much higher than those in developed Asian countries with the same per capita level of income (Morichi, 2005) From another perspective, this trend toward the car for private travel has contributed to problems such as traffic congestion, environmental pollution (Hayashi et al., 2004; Morichi, 2005), and global warming Such negative effects threaten the quality of life and mobility within societies (Mészáros, 2000; Steg and Gifford, 2005) ⇑ Corresponding author Tel./fax: +84 38637003 E-mail address: vhtan@hcmut.edu.vn (H.T Van) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2014.08.008 0965-8564/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 37 Therefore, to move toward increased and widespread use of public transit in developing Asian countries, it is important for planners to manage the use of private transportation modes This can take the form of travel demand management (TDM) or mobility management (MM), strategies aimed at changing the behavior of travelers The literature shows that TDM strategies using economic or regulatory tools with some tangible result are believed to be particularly appropriate in developing countries (Litman, 2004; Victoria Transport Institute, 2005) However, psychological strategies aimed primarily at changing attitudes have not yet been considered by policy makers in many Asian countries This is partly because very few studies have investigated the psychological factors relevant to travelers in these countries Meanwhile, MM measures such as the travel feedback program (Fujii and Taniguchi, 2005), TravelSmart (Department of Transport, Western Australia, 2000), Travel Blend (Ampt and Rooney, 1999), and Individualized Marketing (Brög, 1998), have proven to be effective and low-cost solutions for urban transport in several developed countries Specifically, through communication and persuasion to provide detailed travel information and incentives or to use marketing techniques focusing on individual travel behavior, such measures have successfully induced changes in attitude, reduced car use, and increased the use of public transit (Department for Transport, UK, 2004; Fujii and Taniguchi, 2006) In many Asian developing countries, where a bias seems to exist toward private car versus public transit (Action Plans for Reducing Vehicle Emissions, 2002), such psychological measures could be very important for managing transportation demand In considering such a strategy, it is widely known that behavioral intention is an important psychological factor that determines actual behavior, and that attitude directly influences behavioral intention, as assumed in Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) Indeed, attitudes toward travel modes are among the determinants in deciding on the mode of travel for commuting (Vredin Johansson et al., 2006; Kuppam et al., 1999; Recker and Golob, 1976; Schwanen and Mokhtarian, 2005) It is therefore essential in developing countries to investigate and quantify the role of attitudes toward travel modes on the behavioral intention of choosing a commuting mode before embarking on any psychological approaches to MM Past studies have generally acknowledged that attitudes toward the car and public transit are composed of three main components: the symbolic, the instrumental, and the affective (Gatersleben, 2004, 2007; Steg, 2003, 2005; Steg et al., 2001) Symbolic aspects are related to the way people express social and personal identity Affective aspects refer to emotional feelings of travelers, while instrumental aspects are mainly about benefits of using transport modes Many studies have used different methodologies to investigate attitudes toward the car and public transport However, many of them, for example, Anable and Gatersleben (2005), Hiscock et al (2002) and Stradling et al (1999), did not go beyond qualitative analyses Among quantitative studies, the research by Steg (2003, 2005) can be considered seminal in factorizing attitudes toward travel modes Using principal components analysis (PCA), Steg (2005) found three factors: symbolic affective, instrumental, and independence This finding was in line with Dittmar’s (1992) model which suggested that material possessions are strongly related to social and personal identity In addition, after testing a theoretical model on motives regarding car use by applying attitudinal factors, Steg (2005) concluded that symbolic and affective motives play important roles in explaining the level of car use Most studies discussed above were carried out in European countries whose transportation systems differ in several ways from those in Asian countries Following the quantitative approach by Steg (2005) using PCA, a more recent study by Van and Fujii (2011) in Japan, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, confirmed these three components, and added a fourth, viz social orderliness This newly identified factor, social orderliness, was related to environmental friendliness, safety, altruism, and quietness, among others This factor reflected the diversity in culture and social life among Asian countries in which traffic situations of some developing countries seem to be ‘‘chaotic’’ rather than orderly, especially in urban areas, which make them different from those of developed countries On the whole, those factors reflected how people in Asian countries think about the car versus public transit This article is a continuation of the above study by Van and Fujii (2011) in which the symbolic affective, instrumental, and social orderliness factors of attitudes toward the car and public transit were used as explanatory variables for estimating the behavioral intention of commuting mode choices For each country’s data, the analysis was aimed at weighting attitudinal dimensions in terms of their contribution to explaining the future mode choice for commuting trips The significant determinants were expected to have an effect on future intervention policies, especially on psychological methods for MM Data 2.1 Participants The target subjects of the study were first-year engineering students attending universities in six Asian countries, which were selected to include both developed countries (i.e Japan) and developing countries (i.e China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines) Those countries have certain similarities in culture, thus this motivates us to explore common and different features in terms of travel behavior All surveys were administered in late 2005 and early 2006 Note that students are not necessarily representative of the whole population in each country However, it was necessary to find some common ground so that results could be compared across all the countries If the sampling methods were different in each country, differences in the results might be attributable to the sampling methods, rather than to country differences A survey targeting engineering students was our way of reducing sampling differences across countries 38 H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 In Japan, an open recruitment campaign on the campus of the Tokyo Institute of Technology attracted 403 students by offering an equivalent of US $1.50 to complete the survey One response was eliminated due to missing data In Thailand, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, surveys were administered with the help of local teachers in selected classes and year levels at Chulalongkong University (Bangkok), Nankai University (Tianjin), Bandung Institute of Technology (Bangdung), University of the Philippines–Diliman (Metro Manila), Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City University of Technology, HCM City University of Architecture, and Hong Bang University (HCM City) Only those students who agreed to participate received the questionnaire In Thailand, 100 respondents submitted their survey forms, while 107 did so in China In total, 122, 178, and 209 usable questionnaires were generated in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, respectively Descriptive statistics of those samples are shown in Table The table shows that except for the samples from the Philippines and China, which were approximately equal in terms of gender, the rest had more males than females All samples had similar mean age values The percentage of respondents with a driver’s license and a car was highest in Thailand and lowest in China and Vietnam 2.2 Questionnaire The questionnaire for the study was first written in English for use in the Philippines, and then translated into the official languages of the other countries Each translation was checked by an editor who understood both English and the local language, and who resolved any inconsistencies with the translator Information on attitudes toward travel modes was collected using the semantic differential technique with a five-point bipolar adjective scale For example, for the pair ‘‘poor-rich’’, ‘‘poor’’ was written on the utter left and ‘‘rich’’ was placed on the utter right side of the five-point scale Accordingly, respondents can choose one out of five checkboxes to imply whether the image of the car/public transport is nearer to ‘‘poor’’ or ‘‘rich’’ The ideas of car and public transport modes were stimulated in the respondent’s minds by the large printed words ‘‘Automobile’’ and ‘‘Public Transport’’ in the instructions The questionnaire then showed randomly arranged beliefs in the form of pairs of opposite adjectives, which covered several aspects of travel modes such as the symbolic, instrumental affective, and social moral attributes In total, 32 beliefs were used in common for both modes of car and public transit; however, one belief was eliminated due to mistranslation (see 31 beliefs the Appendix A) For example, ‘‘austere–luxurious’’ and ‘‘cheap–expensive’’ were used to measure the symbolic status dimension, ‘‘inconvenient–convenient’’ and ‘‘useless–useful’’ for the instrumental aspect, and ‘‘destructive–constructive’’ and ‘‘negative–positive’’ for social orderliness After completing the two sets of 32 beliefs for car and public transit, the respondents were asked to choose which kind of travel mode they intended to use to commute to work in the future after getting a job The proposed alternatives in the choice set were car, public transit, walking, motorbike, bicycle, or other choice specified by the respondent However, since the study’s objective was focused mainly on choices between the car and public transit, the others were combined into an ‘‘other modes’’ category The responses of mode choice by country are summarized in Table As shown in Table 2, the car was the predominant intended travel mode in all countries except Japan This was especially true in the samples from the Philippines, in which nearly 90% of the respondents intended to drive to work after getting a job Note that students’ intended behavior for commuting is expected to have a long-term effect on transportation conditions in the region This is because commuting behavior is usually habitual While the habit is usually formed immediately after getting a job, such a habit is expected to be influenced by the behavioral intention developed before actually starting the job, i.e., during the study period (Fujii and Gärling, 2003) 2.3 Attitude factors To obtain the attitude factors from the beliefs rated by the respondents, this study took advantage of the work by Van and Fujii (2011) In that study, the pooled data set of 31 beliefs for car and public transport evaluated by respondents in all six countries was subjected to a principal components analysis (PCA) using varimax rotation The result of the PCA identified three main factors, accounting for 52.6% of the total variance underlying the attitudes toward the car and public transit The first factor accounted for 36.9% of the total variance Belief loads on this factor mostly described the symbolic and Table Descriptive statistics of samples in Japan, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines Sample N Japan Thailand China Vietnam Indonesia Philippines 402 100 107 209 122 178 Gender Age Driver’s license Car ownership % male % female Mean SD % having % not having % having % not having 91 87 61 84 88 53 13 39 16 12 47 20.35 21.09 20.67 21.99 19.67 19.16 2.08 1.66 2.08 2.37 2.06 1.70 50 75 10 56 26 50 25 94 90 44 74 10 53 10 9.7 90 46 98 99 90 89 Note: In cases of less than a 100% sum, the remaining percentage is attributable to missing data 39 H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 Table Percentage indicating a stated intention of choice for each mode by country Car Public transport Other modes Japan (N = 402) Thailand (N = 100) China (N = 107) Vietnam (N = 209) Indonesia (N = 122) Philippines (N = 178) 22.4 47.0 30.6 71.0 18.0 6.0 47.7 18.7 33.6 49.3 17.2 33.5 59.8 11.5 28.7 89.9 3.9 5.1 Note: In cases of less than a 100% sum, the remaining percentage is attributable to missing data affective characteristics of travel modes For example, beliefs such as richness, luxury, superiority, and ‘‘coolness’’ represented prestige values, while comfort, excitement, and relaxation were related to affective feelings This factor was thus referred as symbolic affective The second factor, instrumental, made up 10.9% of the total variance Covering the functional attributes of the travel modes, this factor consisted of beliefs such as usefulness, convenience, simplicity, and speed The last factor, whose beliefs reflected the social orderliness aspect of travel modes included the terms environmentally friendly, safe, altruistic, and quiet The rotated factor loadings of 31 beliefs on the three scales are shown for reference in the Appendix A Note that the beliefs were translated so that respondents in each country could similarly understand their meanings and could rate car and public transport according to the same scales In PCA, factor loadings of each belief on each scale are computed from the constituents of the eigenvector of the correlation matrix This eigenvector determines the direction of that scale Then, the new attitudinal variables are computed by linearly combining all observed variables whose weights are determined by their factor loadings Using this transformation, the three new variables, generated by PCA in that study, were therefore evaluated in an absolute sense In addition, it should be noted that to make it possible for comparing psychological factors between car and public transport, the pooled dataset was used in PCA to generate psychological variables for both car and public transport while assuming that car and public transport have similar structure of attitudinal factors To check the validity of this assumption, we compared the result of PCA on pooled dataset with the results of two PCAs, implemented separately for car and public transport A similar result was found, that is attitudes toward car and attitudes toward public transport separately can also be classified into three similar conceptual scales, namely symbolic affective, instrumental and social orderliness Specifically, a majority of the beliefs similarly had high factor loadings on respective conceptual scales (between car and public transport and between two ways of analysis) This implies that constructing attitudinal factors of car and public transport on a same scale structure would not yield a large difference from constructing attitudinal factors of car and public transport on different scale structures Thus the generated variables in Van and Fujii (2011) can be used in the following analysis for comparing attitudinal factors across countries The descriptive statistics of these variables in Table show that a general contrast existed between the car and public transport in terms of symbolic affective values; that is, the symbolic affective factor for the car was larger than that for public transport In addition, if comparing across countries, we can speculate that respondents in a higher income society like Japan, where it may be economically easier to own car, will perceive having a car as having a lower symbolic status compared to those in lower-income countries Regarding the instrumental aspect, the result indicated that scores for the car were higher than those for public transport in some countries, but lower in others; for example, among the six countries, the score on the instrumental aspect for the car was highest in Japan and lowest in Indonesia For the social orderliness of travel modes, the relationship of scores between the car and public transport were different across countries Details of the comparisons across different countries and travel modes can be found in Van and Fujii (2011) Table Mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) of symbolic affective, instrumental, and social orderliness values for the car and public transport Country sample Car Symbolic affective Instrumental Social orderliness Japan (N = 400) M (SD) Thailand (N = 99) M (SD) China (N = 107) M (SD) Vietnam (N = 209) M (SD) Indonesia (N = 122) M (SD) Philippines (N = 173) M (SD) 0.48 (0.52) 0.79 (0.53) 0.57 (0.66) 1.15 (0.73) 1.00 (0.67) 0.93 (0.61) 0.52 (0.83) À1.09 (0.77) À0.02 (0.85) 0.39 (0.67) 0.04 (0.79) À0.31 (0.80) À0.33 (1.06) 0.26 (0.78) À0.50 (1.04) 0.01 (0.75) 0.31 (0.60) 0.22 (0.71) À0.80 (0.58) À1.01 (0.55) À0.52 (0.63) À0.90 (0.70) À1.03 (0.55) À1.19 (0.82) 0.01 (0.71) 0.09 (1.02) 0.32 (0.89) À0.25 (1.11) 0.67 (1.01) 0.28 (0.98) À0.25 (0.74) À0.02 (0.92) À0.47 (0.67) Public transport Symbolic À0.71 (0.51) affective Instrumental À0.02 (0.94) Social 0.68 (0.78) orderliness 40 H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 Multinomial logit analysis To examine the extent to which attitude factors contribute to explaining participants’ behavioral intention regarding future commuting mode choice, we used multinomial logit (MNL) models of the ‘‘mode of travel to work that respondents intended to choose after getting the job.’’ The three attitude factors toward the car and public transit, that is, symbolic affective, instrumental, and social orderliness, derived from PCA, were used as explanatory variables For the choices of car and public transit, the utility functions were parameterized as a function of the three attitude factors corresponding to each mode and undetermined attributes of the alternative However, the utility function for the choice of other modes only contained undetermined components since the survey covered only the attitudes toward the car and public transit Thus, the other modes group provided a reference to compare with the other two modes In addition, due to the variation in gender, age, driver licensing, and car ownership among countries surveyed, these variables were incorporated as covariates in the utility function This was mainly to eliminate those effects in estimating the roles of the three attitude dimensions on the choice of transportation mode However, not all covariates could be included in some sample groups due to an inadequate size for estimating the respective parameters Two types of models were estimated, including one using the data from all countries and the other six models using data from individual countries The estimation results are given in Table  for the seven models ranged from 0.034 to 0.153, which were As shown in Table 4, the adjusted goodness of fit indices q quite low However, the large v indicates that the models could explain the data set well First, the estimation using the data from all countries yielded the result that the attitude factors were positively related to the behavioral intention regarding commuting mode choice, and all coefficients for the car were larger than those for public transit As also shown in Table 4, the constant for the car was significant and much larger than that for public transit Moreover, gender and car ownership had significant coefficients in the behavioral intention to choose the car Specifically, female respondents and respondents owning a car were more likely to intend to use the car for their future work trips Though such a result might not be the same for female in European countries, it could be reasonable for Asian countries where public transport services are generally overcrowded (like in Tokyo, Japan) and chaotic (like in other developing countries) Women might have certain feelings of insecurity when using public transit Such fears of being harassed might overwhelm thinking about difficulties in maneuvering a car, thus cause women’s stronger intentions to use car than men’s Investigating the differences between countries, we found that none of the coefficients for attitude variables in the sample from the Philippines was significant, although this was not true for the other countries Interestingly, samples collected in developing countries including Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, showed that the social orderliness aspect of the attitude toward public transit had a significant coefficient For respondents in a developed country of Japan, symbolic affective and instrumental aspects of the attitude toward the car and the instrumental aspect of attitude toward public transit were Table Parameter estimates regarding the intention of mode choices for the entire sample of six countries and for the samples within each country Explanatory variable All (N = 1096) Japanese (N = 400) Thai (N = 92) Chinese (N = 100) Vietnamese (N = 209) Indonesian (N = 122) Filipinos (N = 172) B t B t B t B t B t B t B t Constant_car Symbolic affective_car Instrumental_car Social orderliness_car Gender License Car ownership Constant_PT Symbolic affective_PT Instrumental_PT Social orderliness_PT Gender License Car ownership 0.64 0.62 3.16** 5.01*** À1.76 0.93 À2.48* 3.55*** 1.63 0.08 1.29 0.13 0.40 0.68 0.89 1.77# À0.80 0.46 À1.63 1.66# 0.66 0.33 1.50 1.03 2.73 0.71 3.8***4 1.38 0.50 0.78 6.22*** 8.89*** 0.81 0.19 4.43*** 1.08 0.37 0.53 0.90 0.99 0.84 0.76 2.59* 2.26* 0.69 0.51 3.95*** 2.17* 0.35 0.22 1.61 0.80 0.65 À0.13 1.23 À0.30 À0.50 0.08 0.81 0.14 0.32 À2.48* 0.42 2.56* 0.60 2.31* 0.51 0.19 À0.03 1.21 0.35 0.79 0.63 À0.07 2.69** 1.57 0.21 1.95 À1.45 À0.39 À1.43* 0.17 1.81# À1.28 À0.27 À2.04 À0.42 – – 0.45 1.11 À0.80 – – 0.57 1.64 0.90 – – À0.71 0.40 1.88# – – À1.42 1.25 – À0.15 – À1.48 À0.58 – À0.35 – À2.06* À1.15 À0.79 À0.51 À0.12 1.32 1.38 À1.05 À0.58 À0.09 1.25 1.19 0.24 0.60 3.09** 6.57*** 0.34 0.16 2.87** 1.13 À0.64 1.93 À1.46 2.71** 0.25 0.79 0.68 1.93# 0.56 0.48 2.87** 2.29* 0.33 1.29 0.91 2.30* 0.30 0.21 0.53 0.25 À0.34 0.18 0.62 À1.49 0.90 1.76 À0.72 À0.08 0.32 À1.73# À0.31 0.75 À0.28 0.96 À2.00 À0.21 0.77 À1.60 À1.26 – – À1.75# – – À0.14 – – À0.26 – – À À0.15 – À À0.22 – À1.05 À0.15 0.36 À0.89 À0.11 0.18 v2 (d.f.)  q 314.4 (12) 0.131 64.9 (12) 0.061 23.3 (12) 0.111 40.1 (8) 0.153 Note: Variable of Gender is a dummy variable (0 = female; = male) License and Car ownership are also dummy variables (0 = not having; = having) # p < 0.1 * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 *** p < 0.001 56.1 (8) 0.111 17.0 (8) 0.037 9.0 (12) 0.034 H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 41 found to have a positive and significant coefficient in the behavioral intentions of car and public transit use The constant for the car in the Japanese model was also found to be significant, but the magnitude was much smaller than the constant coefficient for public transit Discussion Based on the combined sample from all six countries, we found that all psychological factors were significantly related to the behavioral intention regarding commuting mode choice This result confirms the hypothesis that attitudes may be predictors of behavioral intention, as stated in the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) More importantly, every attitude aspect, that is, symbolic affective, instrumental, and social orderliness, was positively significant for both public transit use and car use This implied that in general, Asian university students have a higher probability of using public transit (or car) when the symbolic affective aspect, instrumental aspect, and social orderliness aspect of attitudes toward public transit (or car) improve Note that we sampled first-year students and investigated their intentions regarding modes for work travel after graduating and getting jobs It is known that career choice clearly represents a deliberate and planned behavior (Harren, 1979; Super and Hall, 1978; Arnold et al., 2006) Thus it is assumed that together with job decision, considerations about commuting mode might be made early by a student However, it should be conceded that the variation related to the time factor in the choice process could therefore make the findings of this study less reliable than those of other possible studies that investigate the intention just prior to the respondents making the actual choices Nevertheless, the intention reported here should relate to their future intention at least to some extent The results therefore simply imply that in general, attitude factors may be useful for understanding, predicting, and changing the choice of commuting mode in Asian countries Future research should verify this hypothesis based on a sample representative of the whole population From the combined model, we also found that the contributions of attitude variables in explaining the intention to use a car were larger than those for public transit This implies that the behavioral intention to use a car compared to public transit was more strongly related to attitudes In addition, the fact that the constant for the car was larger than that for public transit demonstrates a common tendency to prefer the car in Asian countries, as previously noted (Action Plans for Reducing Vehicle Emissions, 2002) In contrast, the significant and large negative constant for the car in the Japanese sample as opposed to the positive constant for public transit implies that everything else being equal, public transit would be the preferred mode only in Japan The result shows that no attitude factors affected behavioral intention regarding the commuting mode choice in the Philippines, but some attitude factors were significant for the other five countries This may have resulted because the constant for the car was positively significant only in the case of the Philippines and was the largest among the six countries, indicating that the Filipino participants had a strong positive bias toward car use A report by ACNielsen (2005) revealed that the car ownership aspiration index, which based on ‘‘current ownership’’ levels and ‘‘future intention’’ to buy a private car in the next 12 months, in the Philippines was among the highest in the Asian region Moreover, unlike other surveyed cities, in terms of regulation, it is very easy to possess a car in Metro Manila as long as one has money, and a general belief among various households is that cars, including used ones, suiting any budget will be available (Rubite, 2004) This could foster a kind social norm for the younger generation in the Philippines to think that car ownership is requisite for expressing freedom and status This possible social norm of respondents in the Filipino sample may have overshadowed the role of the other psychological factors on the intention of future mode choice Apart from the sample from the Philippines, the country-specific models produced some interesting results First, the social orderliness aspect of public transit was a common concern of the respondents in developing countries (i.e., Thailand, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia) in terms of the behavioral intention of selecting public transit for commuting This implies the desirability of improving public transit service in terms of ‘‘social orderliness’’ For example, moderating the destructive, risky, and aggressive image of public transit while spreading commendable beliefs about the modesty and altruism of public transport use and improving safety and environmental friendliness would be highly important for promoting public transit in developing countries, although such improvements would not be as important in a developed country like Japan This result may have occurred because the performance of the current public transit vehicle fleets in developing countries is still generally at a low level (The Korea Transport Institute, 2000; Van and Fujii, 2011) In a different vein, the behavioral intention to commute by public transit in Japan was related to the instrumental aspect of the attitude toward public transit The explanation for this could be that the social orderliness aspect of public transit in Japan is already considerably higher than in developing countries, permitting focus on other aspects of public transit, i.e., the instrumental aspect In other words, the cognitive resources (cf., Payne et al., 1993) for behavioral intention regarding the commuting mode choice by the Japanese participants may be capable of being directed toward the instrumental aspect of public transit rather than toward social orderliness, or the level of chaos, which might otherwise have had a high cognitive impact This explanation seems to be consistent with the fact that Vietnam, whose social orderliness score was as high as Japan’s (see Table 3), also had a significant positive instrumental coefficient for public transit The fact that the model for Vietnam had significant coefficients for both the instrumental and social orderliness aspects of attitudes toward public transit might have occurred because the objective social orderliness of public transit in Vietnam may lie somewhere between that of Japan and the other countries 42 H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 In addition, the results from country-specific models indicated that the symbolic affective aspect of attitudes toward public transit did not have any positive effect in relation to the behavioral intention to commute by public transit This implies that the symbolic affective aspect of public transit is as important as that of the car (discussed below) No attitude variables were significantly related to the behavioral intention to commute by car in Indonesia and Thailand, as well as in the Philippines Note that these countries are the top three in the present study in terms of the frequency of participants who stated their intention to commute by car This strong tendency toward the car might overshadow the role of attitude variables for the car on the behavioral intention of driving to work Except for Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, both the instrumental and symbolic aspects of attitudes toward the car had significant or marginally significant positive coefficients This implies that students will intend to commute by car if they believe that the car is a mode with high symbolic affective attributes (e.g., richness, luxuriousness, superiority, coolness) and/or with high instrumental features (e.g., usefulness, convenience, simplicity, friendliness) A difference between Japan and China or Vietnam with respect to the coefficients for attitude variables for the car appeared in the social orderliness aspect of the attitude toward the car; this was not significant for Japan but was positively significant for China and Vietnam This may reflect the large difference in the mean values for social orderliness of the car between Japan and the other countries As Table shows, the car seems to be considered inappropriate in terms of social orderliness only in Japan Therefore, the model estimation result may imply that a lower level of appropriateness in terms of social orderliness did not play a large role in explaining the behavioral intention to use the car as indicated in the Japanese model, whereas a higher level of appropriateness in terms of social orderliness did have a significant contribution, as Table shows for the Chinese and Vietnamese models Conclusions In Van and Fujii (2011), we found symbolic affective, instrumental and social orderliness when investigating the attitudes toward car and public transport in six Asian countries This verified the existence of the three basic aspects of travel modes i.e symbolic, affective and instrument, found by several researchers on this field in Europe (e.g Gatersleben, 2004; Steg, 2003, 2004 etc.), and also repeated the finding by Steg (2001, 2005) that there is no clear distinction between symbolic and affective factors Social orderliness in that study was a newly-found factor that made it distinctive from the previous studies Inheriting such an exceptional result, this study moves to a further step, showing that attitude factors toward the car and public transit provide valuable insights into the determinants of behavioral intention regarding the commuting mode choice in Asian countries The main findings in this study are as follows In general, attitude variables (i.e., symbolic affective, instrumental, and social orderliness) for the car and public transit are all significant determinants for the samples from six Asian countries The social orderliness aspect of attitude toward public transit was a common concern of respondents in developing countries but not in Japan This means that the improvement of the public transit image in the aspect of social orderliness is highly important for promoting it as a commuting mode Policy makers should develop education programs as parts of transit promotion campaigns Specific intervention programs need to be done to improve people behavior when using public transport modes This will actually improve the image of the public transport modes which may have profound effects on attracting people to use public transit In addition to that, in order to reduce social dilemmas caused by defective behaviors which consequently destruct the image of public transport, education measures should be basically and systematically applied to children in developing countries to help them understand and practice cooperative behaviors This is important not only in building a sustainable transportation system but also in developing country in a whole meaning In countries like Japan, China, and Vietnam, where the intention or desire to use the car is not high, instrumental, symbolic, and affective aspects of attitudes toward the car are significant determinants of the behavioral intention to commute by car In other countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, however, where the intention is high, the models not explain the variance in the behavioral intention to drive to work All of these findings might have contributed to understanding the possible role of modifying attitudes toward travel modes in managing transportation demand for the countries included in this study Based on our findings, we speculate that the effectiveness of such approaches, however, may be limited in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, where the roles of the attitude variables were limited Our primary findings, if verified by further studies using a sample of current commuters, would be useful in designing appropriate transport measures to manage mobility or transportation demand Such management measures would be important for improving the quality of life in Asian countries, as well as contributing to mitigating the effects of motor vehicles on global warming Acknowledgments The survey in this study was supported by the research group for the ‘‘Applicability of Ecological Transportation Systems in Developing Countries’’ of the International Association of Traffic and Safety Science We thank all those who worked with 43 H.T Van et al / Transportation Research Part A 69 (2014) 36–44 us in collecting data in the different countries We also acknowledge grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, which made it possible for Kasem Choocharukul to visit the Tokyo Institute of Technology to collaborate in this research and acknowledge grants by Japanese Government to support scholarship for Hong Tan Van for his PhD study in Tokyo Institute of Technology to make this research Appendix A Rotated factor loadings of beliefs on travel modes by principal components analysis (PCA) Method PCA, rotation method: varimax with Kaiser normalization Belief Factor Symbolic affective Poor–Rich Austere–Luxurious Inferior–Superior Uncool–Cool Cheap–Expensive Vulgar–Aristocratic Traditional–Advanced Dirty–Clean Unattractive–Attractive Uncomfortable–Comfortable Outdated–Fashionable Public–Personal Bored–Excited Unpleasant–Pleasant Non-esteemed–Esteemed Slow–Fast Stressful–Relaxed Uncontrollable–Controllable Not free–Free Modest–Arrogant Negative–Positive Useless–Useful Inconvenient–Convenient Complicated–Simple Unfriendly–Friendly Environmental damaging–Environmental friendly Risky–Safe Egoistic–Altruistic Destructive–Constructive Aggressive–Nonaggressive Boisterous–Quiet Variance contribution (%) 0.813 0.790 0.788 0.786 0.781 0.745 0.738 0.734 0.728 0.728 0.701 0.691 0.682 0.621 0.592 0.584 0.565 0.547 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