Defining Psychological Factors of Cycling in Tehran City

Abstract

Studying active transportation (walking or cycling) is widespread in American and European research. Studies which include latent variables (LV) are growing to identify the exact results of determining the strategies to increase the utility of active transportation (AT). LVs help us conduct more accurate research. LVs are defined as psychological factors such as feeling safe while you ride at night, and thus they are not subjective and hard to understand, but very important to consider in order to increase the utility of using AT modes. In the present paper, most of the previous studies on cycling were reviewed. Different variables, including subjective and LVs, were included to maximize using the bicycle utility and introduced to have better sight for future researchers to deal with modeling AT mode choice. This study applied the latent class analysis to a sample of 345 survey respondents in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, exploring the variables affecting cycling behavior and a confirmatory factor analysis, and a structural equation modeling (SEM) was developed. Results show the importance of having a ‘will’ for using a bicycle, especially in difficult situations, and in view of cultural barriers that affect women cyclists.