PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION USERS’ BEHAVIOR BASED ON THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR

Proper public transportation can reduce personal trip demand and result in less time allocated to driving and ultimately, decrease traffic load and environmental pollution. Today, the high rate of personal property ownership and its consequently increased traffic volumes have led to numerous problems, such as air pollution, reduce in fossil fuel resources, destruction of green spaces for road construction and decreased environmental quality. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the variables of the theory of planned behavior including attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on citizens using public transportation vehicles. In this research, a questionnaire was provided to citizens of Gorgan, north of Iran. 650 questionnaires were distributed among different schools of the city. The students were asked to hand out the questionnaires to their parents to answer. At last, 362 questionnaires were collected of which 339 were confirmed and later evaluated by statistical analyses via SPSS software. The three main variables of the theory of planned behavior, i.e., attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, have significant effect on the citizens’ intention using public transportation as their main choice. It was also found that among the factors influencing the intention of using public transportation, attitude plays the most important role. Another finding was that the subjective norm could have a significant effect on the behavior of citizens in using public transportation. Likewise, perceived behavioral control has a direct relation with the main behavior of citizens, yet its impact is not so high. The results indicated that those who used more public transportation were more aware of its benefits than others. It was also realized that in case of resolving some defects of public transportation, they will be more willing to use it. Regarding the ease or difficulty of using such public services, the findings revealed that the respondents had a desirable behavior about public transportation, but still some problems needed to be addressed. The results also indicated that subjective norm and perceived behavioral control had less impact on the attitude of the citizens in Gorgan, so more careful planning should be made on these two variables, that is, measures such as social pressures from authorities, influential individuals, as well as parents should be taken into account. It can be facilitated by increasing the possibilities of using public transport system.