Alturif, G.; Saleh, W. Attitudes and Behaviour towards More Sustainable Travel Options in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Emerging Social Change? Sustainability2023, 15, 12548.
Alturif, G.; Saleh, W. Attitudes and Behaviour towards More Sustainable Travel Options in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Emerging Social Change? Sustainability 2023, 15, 12548.
Alturif, G.; Saleh, W. Attitudes and Behaviour towards More Sustainable Travel Options in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Emerging Social Change? Sustainability2023, 15, 12548.
Alturif, G.; Saleh, W. Attitudes and Behaviour towards More Sustainable Travel Options in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Emerging Social Change? Sustainability 2023, 15, 12548.
Abstract
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is known for its high car ownership and usage as well its high GDP per capita. This is combined with low/ or no provision of public transportation (PT) systems, has been resulting in perceptual attitudes of full dependency on private car travel. The level of awareness of the benefits of reducing car use and increasing the travel by more sustainable options, has a great impact on social change and behaviour. The Kingdom is currently progressing towards a new phase of “national transfer” through implementation of strategic and sustainable measures and programs. The city of Riyadh is construction a massive metro-system in Riyadh, that is nearing completion and operation. The public is aware of the national agenda, aware of the newly constructed projects and aware of the needed social change to realize the new vision of the country. This paper aims to assess travel behaviour and attitudes towards public transportation of Saudi travellers’ who are witnessing the new transformation in the Kingdom and who are aware of the new sustainable projects. Depicted from the theory of random utility, a discrete choice model of the intent to use public transportation is calibrated as a function of social and attitudinal factors. An online survey was designed and carried out using social media means; a completed 399 questionnaires have been obtained and studied. The methodology includes examining attitudes and preferences of the participants towards using public transportation options against participants’ socio-economic data. The analysis was carried out using ordinal logistic regression analysis (OLR) which is an efficient technique that is derived from the theory of random utility. The results show a good support for PT; a higher support for public transportation modes, form participants who are young females, lower income groups and the university graduates were reported. The level of support seems higher with the higher level of awareness about the new PT system.
Keywords
Travel behaviour; Attitudes towards public transportation; social change; Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR); Vision 2030; KSA
Subject
Social Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
