Factors that Influence University Employees to Commute by Bicycle

Abstract

The environmental, economic, and health benefits of bicycling provide motivation for policy makers to promote bicycling as a means of transportation. Research has linked sociodemographic factors, individual attitudes, and characteristics of the social and physical environments to the decision to bicycle. A study was conducted to identify and estimate the effects of individual and sociodemographic factors on the decisions of university employees to bicycle to work in the context of a bicycle-friendly community with historically high bicycling rates. Results of binary logistic regression with data from an annual campus travel survey at the University of California, Davis, indicated that for university employees, individual attitudes and preferences were key determinants of bicycling, whereas sociodemographic factors such as age, income, and gender did not have direct effects on bicycling. Because many studies have found gender to influence bicycling significantly behavior, gender-specific models were developed, and several significant interaction effects were identified in the final model. Having a graduate degree and rating parking costs as important had positive effects on bicycling for women, whereas only rating travel costs as important had positive effects for men. For both genders, bicycling comfort and liking to bicycle increased the likelihood of commuting by bicycle, whereas general need for a car, need for a vehicle for work activities, liking driving, and rating travel convenience as important decreased the likelihood of bicycling.

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