Gender and transport: women proclivity to minimise car use in Akure, Nigeria

Abstract

The sustainability of the physical environment has now attracted the attention of various professionals , not least, transportation planners. It is incontrovertible that motorcars contribute, in no small measure, to environmental greenhouse gases. In contemporary times, there has been a clar-ion call from experts to car owners, stressing the need to reduce car trips. Evidences from existing literature tend to suggest that women are more likely to heed this call than men. This article therefore explores the propensity of female car owners in Akure to reduce their car trips and patronize public transport. Using a non-probability sampling technique, 100 female drivers, who normally drive in their cars to work, were sampled from Akure urban traffic for this study. Some probabilis-tic models were employed to classify the sampled respondents into their appropriate mode-choice category. The model predicted an increase in the number of women who preferred to discard their private cars for a public transport mode in Akure. The paper concludes with recommendations on ways of encouraging female car-owners to patronize public transport mode in their journey to work in Akure.