Impacts of travellers' social awareness on the intention of bus usage

•Aims at extension of travellers' obligation to mode-use behaviour by considering travellers' social-awareness aspect•Two novel social-awareness determinants of bus use intention were observed.•Specific awareness of consequences was observed better than general awareness of consequences in deciding bus use intention.

The literature on psychological studies includes numerous documented efforts to explain traveller behaviour under the pro-environmental approach. However, this approach was found to perform weakly compared to the self-interest approach. A review of the pro-environmental approach showed that the existing pro-environmental models generally discussed travellers' mode-use obligation under a narrow background of environmental awareness. This would probably lead to results showing no difference in mode-use obligation between private vehicles, which have environmental concerns, and public vehicles, which have both social and environmental concerns. In addition, findings of non-mode-choice studies have suggested that awareness of social value would likely be involved in deciding pro-environmental behaviour. As such, it was suggested that social-awareness factors may influence travellers' obligations to transportation modes. However, it was surprising that the literature on mode-use behaviour showed few efforts aimed at the impacts of social-awareness factors on travellers' mode-use behaviour. This study, therefore, provided an examination of the necessity of expanding travellers' mode-use obligations towards social-awareness aspect by considering various social awareness factors in the mode-use model. Empirical results from 333 respondents in Hidaka City, Japan, showed support for the expansion of the travellers' obligations through observation of novel social-awareness factors, including social-awareness of consequences and perceived service interruption, as predictors of bus use intention.