Experiences of past school travel modes by university students and their intention of future car purchase

Abstract

We studied the relationship between experiences of past school travel-mode choice by university students and their intention to purchase a car in future by using the life-oriented approach. We conducted a retrospective questionnaire survey whose respondents were university students of two universities located in the center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA), two in the suburbs of the TMA, and three in major local cities outside of it. We asked them to consider their experience of past travel mode for going to upper-level elementary, middle, and high school as well as general-purpose travels from their mobility biography. We also asked about possible factors affecting their future intentions, such as their degree of concern about the environmental damage that car use might entail and their daily use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools. Responses from 351 university students were successfully collected. We found that experience of past bicycle use for going to high school affected the intention of future car purchase positively, while rail use for attending high school showed a statistically significant negative correlation. We also modeled the degree of young university students’ intention to purchase a car in future by estimating ordered probit model. As a result, we found that experiences of past school travel by bicycle as high school students showed a positive relation, and of general-purpose travel by rail showed negative relation to intentions of purchasing a car in future. The latter implies that the policy measures for promoting a less car-dependent lifestyle by locating schools in the areas that are easily accessible by rail and conducting mobility management programs for molding school students’ experiences of rail travel.