With the rise of the Internet and mobile phone, various forms of public transport information services have emerged which can enable people to make better informed travel choices. Nevertheless, many people are unaware of these information services and indeed only a minority of the public uses them. Lack of awareness is only one of a series of barriers to travel information use. This paper studies the factors influencing the pre-trip use of public transport information services (via different media - Internet, phone, paper timetables, asking staff). A social-psychological perspective has been adopted which takes habit, attitudes, anticipated emotions, and perceived behavioural control into account. Twelve face-to-face in-depth interviews and six focus groups were conducted across the UK among car drivers and public transport users. The results show that social-psychological factors seem to be important determinants of travel information use. External factors such as trip context could affect these determinants. People do not tend to travel by public transport without consulting any public transport information, unless there are no time constraints, the service runs frequently, or the journey is local. Individuals also seem to have a default source of travel information which they use for most trips. Except for most people older than sixty, the Internet dominates as the common default travel information source. Phoning an enquiries line is unpopular across all age groups, but for different reasons: older people prefer face-to-face contact by visiting their local station, whereas younger people prefer to look up the information for themselves online.
Samenvatting