Cultural Values: A New Approach to Explain People’s Travel Behaviour and Attitudes toward Transport Mode

Abstract

Culture is one of the factors affecting behaviour. Studies from the consumer behaviour and psychology disciplines have shown how culture can be used to explain behaviour differences between people from different cultural background. However, in travel behaviour studies, culture has, up to now, not been commonly used as a determinant to explain behaviour differences. This thesis is designed to help start to fill this gap in the knowledge. Understanding the cultural determinants of travel behaviour is important as societies are becoming more multicultural. A better understanding of the cultural determinants of travel behaviour should assist in the design of better transport provision for multicultural societies. This study focuses on the role culture plays in affecting people’s travel behaviour and attitudes by testing the use of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the reliability and validity of Cultural Values Scales (CVSCALE), that have been successfully used in other fields of study. In doing so, this study investigates the travel behaviour and attitudes of people from different cultural backgrounds using Hofstede’s dimensions to help explain the differences. This study is rooted in the etic approach to cultural research. This approach emphasises that every society is made up of sets of cultures and these can be measured in a quantitative way. Based on this approach, this study applies a quantitative method using a survey questionnaire to collect data about people’s culture, travel behaviour and attitudes/perceptions. Two different surveys were conducted to collect data: face to face and online surveys. Seven hundred fifty-six respondents participated in the surveys carried out on the University of Auckland campuses. There are two phases of analysis in this study: (1) analysing people’s cultural values that were collected using CVSCALE and (2) analysing the effect of culture on travel behaviour and attitudes/perceptions using bivariate and multivariate statistics. The results from the study demonstrated that people from different ethnic groups have different cultural values. Through statistical analyses, this study found significant travel behaviour and attitudes/perceptions differences (p-value < 0.05) between people from different cultural backgrounds. Further analyses indicated that culture had a role in affecting travel behaviour and attitudes. For example, one of the characteristics of a strong uncertainty avoidance culture is a high concern for safety issues. The study found that people with strong uncertainty avoidance cultural perceptions were 14.3% more likely to agree/strongly agree that personal safety issues would limit their use of public transport compared to those from masculine culture (p-value < 0.05). Consistent with studies in other fields, this study also found that the effects of culture are stronger for attitudes/perception than for travel behaviour. Overall, the Hofstede’s cultural framework was found to be useful in explaining the differences in people’s travel behaviour and attitudes/perception toward transport modes. The successful use of a cultural framework to explain travel behavior differences means that there is scope for further use in different contexts. The findings also provide practitioners with a better understanding of the role of culture and this enhanced cross-cultural understanding can be used to develop more inclusive travel related policies.