Evaluation of the potential modal shift induced by the use of a real time multimodal navigator: psycho-social study of travel behaviour and attitude

Our modern world, and its relative stability, is facing two major threats. The first one is the depletion of fossil fuels resources that feed millions of trucks and boat worldwide, carrying goods from one side of the planet to another. The second one is climate change which, if not limited, will provoke drastically changes to our known environment. One way, that may be the most efficient, to mitigate both threats is to pull people out of their cars, and, to this end, The European White Paper (2011) on transport highlights the essential role of ITS. Today, many cities have deployed multimodal real-time information systems, but few have assessed the impacts of those systems on traveller behaviour. This global context guided the investigation made in the present thesis: in order to analyse potential modal shift induced by the introduction of multimodal navigators, we had to understand psychological factors of decision making. Chapter 1 proposed an extensive review of the current knowledge and state of the art of social psychology as applied in pro-environmental behaviours. We understood some concepts, highlighted some theoretical and methodological flaws that led us to use, though restrictively, some old-fashioned concept of attitude together with some - insufficiently recognised - powerful methodological tools that constitutes the IRT. The objective of this thesis was twofold: 1) assessing the validity of a general attitude measures, in the sense of Campbell and understanding if the generally adopted measure of attitude is compelling within traditional frameworks derived from social psychology theories; 2) make use of psychological determinants influencing modal choice to highlight which segment of the population is more likely to perform a modal shift from cars to public transport or soft modes. To this end, the research was divided in three methodological step: 1) fitting a Rasch model on the General Ecological Behaviour in order to obtain a valid measure of the attitude toward the environment; 2) psycho-social correlational model comparison using Structural Equation Modelling in order to extract the most determining factors behind decision making; 3) a psycho-social based segmentation of ATIS potential users, that would help in identifying the potentiality of ATIS in inducing a modal shift. This research contributed, firstly, in gathering evidence that a wider use of IRT for psychological measurement may be a benefit for the scientific community. Secondly, some newly developed psychological constructs, based on specific values, have been shown to have a significant influence on travel behaviour. We hope that this contribution will allow some other use of specific values and innovative factors research. Finally, we suggest that up to 10% of our sample population may be induced toward a greener urban mobility. As the Opticities research project - within which this thesis has been conducted - is still ongoing, further investigation will be made in the near future. The analysis of in-itinere and ex-post dataset will allow us to understand whether or not people have modified their mobility patterns using the multimodal navigator TUeT