Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011

A Cross Asian Country Analysis in Attitudes toward Car and Public

Hong Tan VAN Satoshi FUJII Lecturer Professor Department of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Department of Urban and Environmental Minh City University of Technology Engineering, University 268 Ly Thuong Kiet, District 10, Ho Chi C1, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8540, Minh City, Vietnam Fax: Fax: +84-8-39930083 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

Abstract: The first aim of this study was to do an exploratory investigation of dimensions of attitudes toward car and public transport in six Asian countries (Japan, , China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines). The second aim was to find out determinants of the dimensions as well as of the possible differences of attitudes across countries. Attitudes toward car and public transport by 1,118 respondents in six countries were measured by 31 beliefs in form of pairs of opposite adjectives. The results of principle component analysis yielded three factors of attitudes toward car and public transport, namely: Symbolic affective, Instrumental, and Social orderliness. The result of comparison between attitudes toward car and public transport in each country indicated that the contrary between car and public transport may transcend cultures. ANOVA also revealed that there were great divergences across countries in the all three dimensions of attitudes toward car and public transport.

Key Words: Attitude toward transport modes, Symbolic affective, Instrumental, Social orderliness.

1. INTRODUCTION

Motorization is now occurring in many countries with different rates. Except for some countries like Japan that completely motorized, the rise of vehicle ownership presently can be seen in many Asian countries (Morichi, 2005). Rapid developing of car fleet soon makes the whole transport system of these countries overload, thus obstructing the mobility. In addition, from the view point of possible global warming effects in the near future, motorization in such pre-motorized countries is quite serious problems. Therefore, recent transport policies in some developing Asian countries have started to focus on raising public awareness about sustainable transport, together with promoting public transport use (Pardo, 2006).

For the sake of this strategy, it is important to know how Asian people feel about car and public transport. This is of course because that understanding people’s attitude will be the basic for the forecasting of people’s intention and behavior, as implied by Ajzen (1991)’s theory of planned behavior. With this recognition, this study will aim at finding out determinants of the dimensions as well as of the possible differences of attitudes across countries.

The dimensions of attitudes toward car and public have been examined in some previous studies. Accordingly, researchers on the benefit of travel mode use have so far shared common acknowledgment that car and public transport generally possess three functions:

411 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011

Symbolic, Instrumental, and Affective.

First of all, a motivation of travel mode choice, especially with regard to car, is derived from symbolic value (Victoria Transport Institute, 2005). Symbolic status, in other word, is the expression of personal identity (Dittmar, 1992). Many studies have confirmed the contribution of this attribute to car use or consumption (Jensen, 1999 etc.). Among them, studies by Steg (2003), Ibrahim (2003) etc. went further with the comparison of the status symbol between car and public transport. They came to the same conclusion that car confers more status value than public transport does.

Other important dimensions of benefit of vehicle are instrumental and affective factors, mostly focused in past studies. Many attributes have been used to examine these two aspects. Among them, monetary cost, convenience, complexity, speed etc. were described as instrumental aspect while freedom, excitement, enjoyment, relaxation and pleasance etc. were mostly referred to affective utility of travel modes (Steg, 2003; Ibrahim, 2003; Hiscock et al, 2002). Instrumental aspects are mainly related to functional attributes (Dittmar, 1992) whereas affective motives can be considered as deeper or emotional feelings (Steg, 2005).

Previous studies also found that symbolic and affective factors have strong relation (Hiscock et al., 2002). This may be due to an association in respondents’ mind between the two conception of symbolic status and affection. Gatersleben (2009) concluded that symbolic values “may evoke feelings of positive arousal” and “were mainly related to feeling stimulated”. Steg also supported this notion. Through the results of factor analysis in two of her studies (Steg, 2005; Steg et al., 2001), she repeatedly reported a connection between symbolic and affective factors.

It should be noted that the literature review above has sketched out the attitudes toward travel modes in Europe countries. Therefore, in different regions or countries such as Asia with disproportion in development level and diversity in culture and social life among countries, a study about the attitudes toward travel modes may yield different aspects. For this reason, in this article, various aspects of attitudes toward car and public transport of people in six countries in Asia including Japan, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines were analyzed and compared.

2. METHODOLOGY

2.1. Participants

In these six countries, engineering students in universities including Institute of Technology (Tokyo), Chulalongkong University (Bangkok), Nankai University (Tianjin city), Bandung Institute of Technology (Bangdung city), Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City University of Technology, HCM City University of Architectures, and Hong Bang University (HCM city), University of the Philippines-Diliman (Metro Manila) were targeted as respondents for this survey. Among these six survey places, only Tokyo, Japan has fully-coved and well- organized public transport system with rail and public comprising of about 36% share. Other cities like Bangkok, Metro Manila and Tianjin also have a highly-invested bus system and few rail lines which atract a lot of low/average income people using, while HCM City and Bangdung have just at the initial step of investment on the bus system thus share of bus use is still low. Except for Japan, all other five countries have kinds of para-transit operating

412 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011 together with conventional bus and those modes of transport also a main transport mode for the poor.

All surveys were implemented in the end of 2005. In Japan, the participants were 403 students widely recruited from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo) by offering each an equivalent incentive of 1.5 USD; totally 402 questionnaires were usable. In Thailand, China, Indonesia the Philippines and Vietnam, engineering students in some classes and year levels in, respectively were selected and the surveys were implemented under the helps of those class lecturers. Only those students who agreed to participate were distributed the questionnaires. In Thailand, 100 respondents handed back their filling out forms, while this number was 107 in China. In Indonesia Vietnam, and the Philippines respectively, total 122, 209 and 178 questionnaires received were all usable. The response rate in all surveys was considered 100%. Descriptive statistic of those samples can be referred in Table 1.

Table 1: Descriptive statistic of samples in Japan, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, & the Philippines Sex Age Driving license Car ownership Sample N % % % % not % % not Mean SD men women having having having having Japan 402 91 9 20.35 2.08 50 50 10 90 Thailand 100 87 13 21.09 1.66 75 25 53 46 China 107 61 39 20.67 2.08 6 94 2 98 Vietnam 209 84 16 21.99 2.37 10 90 1 99 Indonesia 122 88 12 19.67 2.06 56 44 10 90 Philippines 178 53 47 19.16 1.70 26 74 10 89

Note: In case of a less than 100% sum, the remaining percentage is attributed to missing cases.

2.2. Questionnaire

To measure attitudes toward travel modes, Osgood’s semantic differential technique with five- point bipolar adjective scale was used. The image of car and public transport modes were elicited in the respondent’s mind by large size printed words of “Automobile” and “Public transport” in the instruction part, then the questionnaire showed randomly-arranged beliefs in form of pairs of opposite adjectives which covered several aspects of travel modes such as symbolic, instrumental, affective, social moral attributes. In total, 32 beliefs were used in common for both two modes of car and public transport (see Table 2). For example, “austere- luxury” were used to measure symbolic status dimension; “inconvenient-convenient” for instrumental aspect, and “destructive-constructive” were to examine social moral factor. Many of similar measures have been widely used in literatures for investigating the images of car and public transport. For example, for car use Lupton (2002) found that convenience, independence and freedom, control are positive aspects of car. Steg et al. (2001) used a list of 60 attractive and unattractive features of car which covered not only instrumental but also symbolic features of car use. Steg (2003, 2005) did similarly by asking respondents to judge both car and public transport on instrumental, affective and social-symbolic scales, for example convenience, independence, flexibility, comfort, speed, reliability, pleasure and status, freedome, stress, cosiness, control, arousal...Hiscock et al (2002) found psycho-social benefits such as undesirable social contact, privacy, personal space and violence are judged better for car than for public transport.

For each mode, respondents were asked to use intuitive feeling, quickly evaluate to what

413 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011 extent those adjective pairs match with the image they have about that mode. The purpose of this was to obtain the salient beliefs that highest related to that travel mode. The questionnaire form was first written in English, and then it was translated into other official languages of the surveyed countries. There is a note that although 32 beliefs were initially presented in the questionnaire, only 31 beliefs were finally included in the analysis. This was due to the mistranslation of the pair “unsocial-social” that made a difference between the Japanese version and the others.

Table 2: Rotated factor loadings of beliefs on travel modes Factor Belief Symbolic affective Instrumental Social orderliness Poor-Rich 0.813 Austere-Luxurious 0.790 Inferior-Superior 0.788 Uncool-Cool 0.786 Cheap-Expensive 0.781 Vulgar-Aristocratic 0.745 Traditional-Advanced 0.738 Dirty-Clean 0.734 Unattractive-Attractive 0.728 Uncomfortable-Comfortable 0.728 Outdated - Fashionable 0.701 Public-Personal 0.691 Bored-Excited 0.682 Unpleasant-Pleasant 0.621 0.492 Non-esteemed-Esteemed 0.592 Slow-Fast 0.584 0.438 Stressful-Relaxed 0.565 Uncontrollable-Controllable 0.547 Unfree-Free 0.530 0.461 Modest-Arrogant 0.494 -0.428 Negative-Positive 0.451 0.402 Useless-Useful 0.648 Inconvenient-Convenient 0.625 Complicate-Simple 0.532 Unfriendly-Friendly 0.511 Environmental damaging- 0.727 Environmental friendly Risky-Safety 0.653 Egoistic-Altruistic 0.549 Destructive-Constructive 0.539 Aggressive-Unaggressive 0.522 Boisterous-Quiet 0.477 0.492 Variance contribution % 36.9% 10.9% 4.8% Note: Only factor loadings ⎜≥0.4⎟ are printed

3. DIMENSIONS OF ATTITUDES TOWARD TRAVEL MODES

A principle component analysis with varimax rotation was performed on 31 beliefs to identify main factors of attitudes toward car and public transport. For ease of presentation, only measures having factor loadings larger than 0.4 are reported in Table 2. The result shows that 52.6% of the total variance of 31 measures was explained by three factors. The first factor accounted for 36.9% variance. Beliefs loaded high on this factor mostly describe symbolic characteristics of travel modes, e.g. richness, luxury, superiority, “coolness”, expensiveness,

414 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011 aristocracy etc. clearly represent for prestige values. However, other beliefs with smaller factor loadings such as comfort, excitement, relaxation, and pleasantness etc., which reflected affective motives of travel mode use, also loaded on this factor. For this reason, this factor represents for Symbolic affective aspect of travel modes. The second factor made up 10.9% variance. The beliefs such as usefulness, convenience, simplicity and fastness, which loaded high on this factor, refer to Instrumental attributes of travel modes. The last factor reflecting social orderliness respects of travel modes comprised of beliefs whose factor loadings on the third component were high. These beliefs include environmental friendliness, safe, altruism, quietness etc. Therefore this factor, which statistically explained 4.8% variance, is named as Social orderliness. The variance contribution rate of this factor was a little smaller compared to the first factor. This might attribute to the adoption of a large number of symbolic affective beliefs for the rating that may be a part of the reason for an unbalance in variance explanation between the three factors.

The result implies the existence of the three basic aspects of travel mode mentioned above. Besides, it verified the previous results by Steg (2001, 2005) that there is no clear distinction between symbolic and affective factors. Among the three aspects, Social orderliness appeared to be a new feature that makes this study distinctive from the previous ones. Actually, this aspect was not investigated in previous studies on attitudes toward car and public transit. This can be elucidated in the following discussion.

Some traffic situations in developing countries seem to be “chaotic” rather than orderly, especially in urban areas, that make them different from those in developed countries. This feature is attributed to not only the vehicle but also road user’s behaviors. First, the standards for vehicle performance are less concerned in some developing nations in the past years (Takatsu, 2003). A number of motor vehicles in vehicle fleet of some countries are of old vintages or second-hand imports from wealthier countries and lack up-to-date safety features (Reich & Nantulya, 2002). Besides conventional buses, public transport systems in Asian developing cities are characterized by various forms of para-transit such as tuk-tuk in Thailand, jeepney in the Philippines, angkot in Indonesia, dasu in Vietnam, and motorcycle taxi, which is very popular in South East Asian countries. In addition, at preliminary stage of development, the road network in some major cities of these countries has not yet constructed well in response to the sudden increase of vehicle fleet (Morichi, 2005). Therefore, these vehicles are not only the hazard to road users but also the deleterious source of noise and exhaust emission to the environment. Secondly, the non-compliance with traffic principles together with low awareness of drivers such as swerving between lanes, moving across the flow of traffic or aggressive driving etc. have severely caused chaotic situations for the traffic system and for the whole society. The high rates of injury and fatality due to traffic accidents in developing countries are the evidence for this remark. Such chaotic transportation situations in some developing Asian countries can hardly be seen in European countries. Thus this may be a reason for the current study’s finding of social orderliness as a dimension of participants’ attitudes toward car and public transit which did not show up in the previous studies using data from European countries.

4. CROSS-COUNTRY COMPARISON

To investigate the differences between modes, countries and the effects of other factors, a two (Mode, i.e. car and public transport) by six (Country, i.e. national identity) analyses of variance (ANOVA) that accounts for the effects of four covariates of Age, Sex, License (i.e.

415 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011 having or not having), and Car ownership was performed on the three new generated variables of symbolic affective, instrumental and social orderliness aspects of travel modes. Due to the disproportion of sex, age, rates of having driving license and car ownership among surveyed countries, the parameter estimation regarding these factors as covariates was performed to eliminate these effects in estimating effect of Mode and Country in ANOVA.

The coefficients of covariates on three dependent variables are given in Table 4. The plots of the estimated marginal means of the three types of values regarding car and public transport across six countries are showed in Figure 1. For clarity, the result of each aspect of travel modes is separately discussed, starting from symbolic affective aspect.

First, according to Table 4, symbolic affective factor was not significantly influenced by the covariates of Sex, Age, License, and Car ownership. ANOVA result indicates that there was a significant difference between travel modes (F (1, 2208) = 3391.64, p<0.001). This significant effect of Mode was due to the fact that symbolic affective factor for car was larger than for public transport as shown in Figure 1a. Country also had a significant effect on symbolic affective factor (F (5, 2204) = 31.29, p<0.001). The interaction between Country and Mode were also significant (F (5, 2204) = 28.26, p<0.001), which means that the difference of symbolic affective factors across countries was different across different modes. Figure 1a shows the symbolic affective values for both car and public were largest. It also indicates that the symbolic affective value for car in Japan was lowest. In addition, the symbolic affective value for public transport in Japan was highest among these countries, except for Vietnam. On the other hand, the Chinese and Filipino respondents were the two that attached the lowest symbolic affective values to public transport.

Table 3: Mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) of symbolic affective, instrumental, and social orderliness values of car and public transport Country's sample Japanese Thai Chinese Vietnamese Indonesian Filipino Total (n=400) (n=99) (n=107) (n=209) (n=122) (n=173) (n=1110) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) Car Symbolic affective 0.48 0.79 0.57 1.15 1.00 0.93 0.77 (0.52) (0.53) (0.66) (0.73) (0.67) (0.61) (0.66) Instrumental 0.52 -0.02 0.04 -0.33 -0.50 0.31 0.12 (0.83) (0.85) (0.79) (1.06) (1.04) (0.60) (0.95) Social orderliness -1.09 0.39 -0.31 0.26 0.01 0.22 -0.30 (0.77) (0.67) (0.80) (0.78) (0.75) (0.71) (0.97) Public transport Symbolic affective -0.71 -0.80 -1.01 -0.52 -0.90 -1.03 -0.78 (0.51) (0.58) (0.55) (0.63) (0.70) (0.55) (0.60) Instrumental -0.02 -1.19 0.09 -0.25 0.28 -0.02 -0.12 (0.94) (0.82) (1.02) (1.11) (0.98) (0.92) (1.04) Social orderliness 0.68 0.01 0.32 0.67 -0.25 -0.47 0.30 (0.78) (0.71) (0.89) (1.01) (0.74) (0.67) (0.93) Total Symbolic affective -0.12 0.01 -0.19 0.32 0.05 -0.05 0.00 Instrumental 0.25 -0.60 0.06 -0.29 -0.11 0.15 0.00 Social orderliness -0.20 0.20 -0.01 0.47 -0.12 -0.13 0.00

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Table 4: Parameter estimates of covariates (N=2210) Dependent variable Covariate β tSig. Symbolic affective value Sex 0.00 -0.06 0.954 Age 0.01 1.35 0.177 License 0.04 1.32 0.189 Car ownership -0.05 -1.13 0.258 Instrumental value Sex 0.12 2.34 0.019 Age -0.02 -1.82 0.069 License 0.06 1.12 0.265 Car ownership 0.03 0.37 0.709 Social orderliness value Sex 0.06 1.22 0.223 Age 0.02 2.18 0.029 License 0.13 3.16 0.002 Car ownership -0.09 -1.47 0.143

Note: Variable of Sex is a dummy variable (0 = female; 1 = male) License and Car ownership are also dummy variables (0 = not having; 1 = having).

With respect to instrumental aspect of travel mode, the analysis yielded a significant effect of Country (F (5, 2204) = 34.42, p<0.001). According to Table 3, an average of instrumental value between travel modes in general was seen highest in Japan and there was significantly difference across countries. Table 3 also reveals that the value for public transit was smaller than that of car, which means that instrumental value brought by public transit was significantly lower than by car on average. These would be a reason for the result that Mode had a significant effect on the instrumental factor (F (1, 2208) = 18.44, p<0.001). The interaction effect between Country and Mode were found to be significant (F (5, 2204) = 32.75, p<0.001). This implies that the difference of instrumental values across six countries was different between the two modes. As can be seen in Figure 1b, the Japanese respondents had the highest scores on the instrumental aspect of car use whereas the respondents in Indonesia had the lowest score for car but highest score for public transport on this aspect. On the other hand, the Thai respondents scored lowest for the instrumental aspect of public transport. Regarding covariates, Sex significantly influenced the instrumental factor (t (2208) = 2.34) (see Table 4). Male respondents evaluated the instrumental aspect more positively compared to female respondents. In addition, the factor of age also had a marginally significant effect on instrumental factor, that is, respondents of younger ages had higher score on this aspect than the older respondents did (t (2208) = -1.82).

1.50 1.00 1.00 1.14 1.00 0.95 0.66 0.67 1.00 0.50 0.79 0.50 0.50 0.36 0.58 0.24 0.33 0.26 0.48 0.16 0.37 0.27 0.50 0.11 0.00 -0.05 -0.05 0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.02 0.00 -0.21 -0.26 Japan China Japan China the the -0.26 Vietnam Vietnam Thailand Thailand -0.29 Indonesia -0.50 Indonesia -0.50 Philippines Philippines China Japan

the -0.42

-0.50 Vietnam -0.53 Thailand

Indonesia -0.52 Philippines -0.72 -0.79 -1.00 -1.00 -1.00 -0.90 -1.11 -1.00 -1.01 -1.23

-1.50 -1.50 -1.50 (a) (b) (c) Figure 1: Estimated marginal means of symbolic affective (a), instrumental (b) and social orderliness (c) values of car and public transport across six countries

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Last, in social orderliness aspect, according to Table 3, the overall country average score for public transit was larger than that for car, that results in a significant main effect of Mode (F (1, 2208) = 43.86, p<0.001). Country also had a significant effect on social orderliness factor (F (5, 2204) = 37.10, p<0.001). This tells that social orderliness factors were significantly different across countries. Country × Mode interaction effect was also found to be significant on this aspect (F (5, 2204) = 166.66, p<0.001). As presented in Table 3 and Figure 1c, the difference of social orderliness factors between car and public transport were different across countries. In detail, the score on social orderliness aspect by the Japanese respondents for car was lowest among the six countries; however for public transport, this score together with that by the Vietnamese respondents were the highest. The Thai respondents had the highest score on the social orderliness aspect of car. The Filipino respondents, on the other hand, reported the lowest scores for public transport on this aspect. Furthermore, with respect to the covariates, the factor of age and owning a driving license had significant influences on the judgment of social orderliness aspect of travel modes. Interestingly, contrary to instrumental factor, on social orderliness factor, the respondents of older ages generally had higher scores compared to the younger respondents (t (2208) = 2.18); besides, respondents having a driving license averagely scored higher than respondents with no driving license (t, 2208 = 3.16).

5. DISCUSSION

The main purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of attitudes toward car and public transport in Asian countries. This is because the previous studies about the attitudes toward car and/or public transport used data from only developed countries whereas the Asian countries in this study have a large diversity in terms of level of development. Based on the surveys implemented in six Asian countries, i.e. Japan, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the factor analysis of 31 beliefs revealed three factors underlying the attitudes toward car and public transport, namely Symbolic affective, Instrumental and Social orderliness.

The first two factors underlying the attitudes toward car and public transport, i.e. symbolic affective, instrumental, were consistent with previous inductive studies by Steg (2001, 2005) about car use and generally agreed with Dittmar (1992)’s model assuming about the three functions of material possessions. Besides, with the blend of symbolic and affective factors into one scale throughout several studies (Steg et al., 2001; Steg, 2005) including this study, it may be able to conclude that symbolic values can evoke emotional feeling as implied by Gatersleben (2009).

The comparison across countries in terms of symbolic affective aspect appeared to support the notion that respondents in a higher income society, where it may be economically easier to own car, will perceive car as a lower symbolic status than other and vice versa. Specifically, respondents in the Japanese sample, having high living standard with per capita income of more than 33000 and car ownership rate of about 350 cars per 1000 people (according to Japan Statistical Yearbook 2006), showed lowest evaluation score on car’s symbolic affective dimension. On the contrary, in the Vietnamese sample, which is regarded as the lowest income group of about 2500 USD per capital, car was attached with highest symbolic affective value. Interestingly, Vietnamese sample’s symbolic affective score was higher for public transport than any other countries’ as well. This may be because public transport can not yet be seen frequently even in urban areas. According to recent figure by HTWG (2002), percentage of vehicle fleet of all types for public transport in HCM city presently is estimated

418 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011 of about 4%.

Although the scores on symbolic affective aspect for car were higher than for public transport in all the countries, the scores on instrumental aspect for car were higher than for public transport in some countries but were lower in the other countries. The score on instrumental aspect for car in Japan was highest in the target countries, which made Japan a country where the score for car was higher than for public transport. On the other hand, the score for car in Indonesia, which car ownership rate of approximately 72 cars per 1000 population and per capital income of about 3500 USD, was lowest in the target countries making Indonesia a country where the score for car was lower than for public transport. This variance of the score for car across countries may result from the cross-country difference of the level of road construction and the level of road traffic management system. Since road networks and road traffic management system are well developed in Japan, traffic condition in Japan is not generally congested comparatively to the other Asian countries even though sometimes there is traffic congestion in the peak period in Japan. On the other hand, such traffic systems in Bangdung, Indonesia have not yet been constructed well; and this deficiency yields frequent and serious traffic congestion as reported by Tamin (2005). Another remarkable point in the result of the score on instrumental aspect is that the score for public was remarkably low comparatively to the other countries. This may be because of the poor accessibility of public transport to the city center in Bangkok, Thailand (Rujopakarn, 2003). Moreover, 52% of trips by public transport are by large bus (OCMLT, 2004) and such vehicles are usually congested in heavily traffic jam that caused inconvenience and economic losses for bus users (Rujopakarn, 2003). It should be noted that at the time of the survey, car ownership per 1000 people in Thailand as high as 280 while they are about 25 in China and the Philippines; and GDP per capital in Thailand, China, and the Philippines are repectively about 8200, 4500, 3200 USD.

The comparison in terms of social orderliness of travel modes among countries indicates that the relation of scores for car and public transport in the Japanese sample seems to be different from those in the other countries’. That is, the score for public transport was much higher than for car. The score for car in Japan was remarkably lower than in the other countries while the score for public transport in Japan was one of the highest among the surveyed countries together with that in Vietnam. The fact would be that the level of the desirability of road traffic with respect to orderliness, safe and pro-environment and the level of unaggressiveness and altruism of people and drivers in Japan may be higher than in other target countries. Therefore, this result implies that subjective evaluation of social orderliness of car and public transport is not always corresponding to its objective level. One possibility is that they would evaluate social orderliness of modes while comparing between modes. The attributes accounted for in such comparisons may depend on the target objectives. For example, a process model of decision making proposed by Montgomery (1983) implied that people when comparing two objects would consider aspects that are different between the two, and would ignore other aspects that are almost same between the two. Thus, the aspects that can be easily used for the purpose of differentiating the two objects would be focused when comparing the two. A possible reason why Japanese participants evaluated car much lower than public transport in terms of social orderliness is that they attended strongly on negative social externalities such as air pollution, traffic congestion, and global warming effect that connect more with car than with public transport in Japan. However such aspects may not be attended in other target countries, because participants in the other countries might think about other aspects regarding social orderliness such as air condition and noise condition, which could be felt better inside cars rather than in public transport modes. Another possible

419 Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol.9, 2011 reason for the result may be a difference of environmental concerns between the Japanese respondents and the respondents in other countries (Fransson & Gärling, 1999). However, the difference across Asian countries has not yet been explicitly investigated. An interesting result is that in Vietnam the average of the social orderliness scores for car and for public transport is largest. This may be because both public transport and car use are still very low in Vietnam, while other modes such as bicycle and motorcycle are more frequently used (HTWG, 2002). Therefore, the Vietnamese respondents might feel that the social orderliness aspects of car and public transport were better than those of bicycle and motorcycle.

For mitigating global warming problem, the management of motorization in developing and pre-motorized countries, would be seriously important. Therefore, public transit promotion would be one of the most essential issues in these countries. The result of this study might be used as fundamental knowledge for policies to promote more environmentally sustainable travel modes such as public transport rather than car as well as to lower the trend of strong passion for car in developing countries, while accounting for each country’s characteristics.

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