Investigating confirmation bias in transportation: An analysis of perceived health risk on public transit during the pandemic

Abstract

IntroductionConfirmation bias, the tendency to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs, could be one of the mental barriers that prevents individuals from responding to transportation campaigns and implementing politicians' recommendations. However, previous research has not adequately examined this bias and who is more likely to have it. This study proposes a survey-based experiment to investigate people's confirmation bias on transportation-related topics. The health risks of using public transit during the pandemic were used as an application to examine if confirmation bias exists. MethodsA survey was designed to investigate the existence of three types of confirmation bias in information search, interpretation, and recall on the topic of health risks of using public transit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moderation analysis was employed to investigate the impact of individual attributes on the confirmation bias. ResultsThe findings support the hypothesis that confirmation bias exists on the topic of public transit health risks. Furthermore, having access to public transit is likely to lessen confirmation bias, while high income and a lack of transit experience are likely to strengthen the confirmation bias. Those who are older, have less experience with public transit, have a higher income, lower education level, and those who identify with a right-leaning political party are less likely to search for, trust, and recall viewpoints that support low health risks associated with public transit. ConclusionsConfirmation bias was discovered in people's perceptions of transportation topics, providing policymakers with insight into how to frame communications with travelers to counteract this bias. With this information, policymakers can more efficiently evaluate how transportation programs are perceived by diverse populations and develop more targeted campaigns to overcome this bias that encourage wider adoption of future transportation policies and programs.