Environmental behaviour and choice of sustainable travel mode in urban areas: comparative evidence from commuters in Asian cities

Abstract

Promoting pro-environmental travel modes is an important strategy for sustainable transportation. Previous studies have shown a positive relationship between environmental awareness and environmentally friendly travel modes, but very few studies have considered pro-environmental behaviour and choice of travel mode, particularly in the context of non-Western countries. This study examines the impact of pro-environmental behaviour on the choice of commuting mode in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore using original survey data. We use the Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause model to construct latent variables of environmentally friendly behaviours. The multinomial logistic regression results indicate that 1) pro-environmental activities and commuting mode choice are unrelated in Tokyo and Singapore, 2) recycling and energy-savings activities are positively related to commuting by bicycle/on foot in Beijing, and 3) participants in organized pro-environmental activities are less likely to use pro-environmental commuting modes in Beijing and Shanghai. The results provide supporting evidence of the habit discontinuity hypothesis and suggest a possible substitution effect between environmentally friendly travel mode choice and other environmental activities.

Healthy Behavior and Environmental Behavior Correlate with Bicycle Commuting

“…This might be because the Center district and East district are urban areas with quality cycling infrastructure and greater street network connectivity than the other districts [ 56 ]. Moreover, household type has no significant relationship with bicycle commuting in this study, which is in contrast with the results of Kumagai and Managi [ 41 ] who conducted a survey in Beijing and Singapore.…”

“…Stern [ 50 ] also put forward a similar point of view that some environmental behaviors may follow from a desire to save money. These results are in contrast with Kumagai and Managi [ 41 ], who indicated that environmental behaviors taken at home have a significant relationship with bicycle commuting in Beijing. However, PB (β = 0.22) is positively correlated with bicycle commuting.…”

“…As suggested by previous research, environmental awareness and health awareness, only toward one type, have significant relationships with cycling usage [ 6 , 11 , 12 , 36 , 41 ]. The main contributions of our research are as follows: (1) Our research underlined the importance of focusing on different types of environmental behaviors and healthy behaviors that have been clearly defined; (2) our research also demonstrated that not all the types of environmental behaviors or healthy behaviors can be considered correlated with bicycle commuting, which has been ignored by most previous research; and (3) the findings of this study could help policy makers and planners develop more focused policies.…”

“…Environmental awareness in most of the previous studies also remains incomprehensive. Kumagai and Managi [ 41 ] tested the relationship between environmental behaviors that can be taken at home and travel mode choice. They indicated that environmental activities such as recycling activities positively correlated with bicycle commute in Beijing.…”

Effect of environmental awareness on electric bicycle users’ mode choices

“…The findings suggest that a high level of environmental awareness exerts a positive effect on the use of more environmentally friendly transport modes. Such findings are in accordance withconsistent to those of previous studies (Gardner and Abraham, 2010;Kumagai and Managi, 2019;Lind et al 2015;Liu et al, 2017;Mei et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2020;Zhou et al, 2020).…”