Attitudinal Bicycle Commuting Market Segmentation in Nanjing, China: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

摘要

The primary purpose of this paper is to identify travelers’ willingness to commute by bicyclesand to investigate the effects of their attitudes on this willingness. To achieve this objective, anattitudinal market segmentation method is presented with a case study of Nanjing in China. Thisapproach uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to simultaneously identify the travelers’cognitive and affective attitudes, perceptual evaluation on bicycling, and willingness to usebicycles. According to the result of SEM, three attitudes have highly significant effects on thewillingness to use bicycle. It is found that travelers’ desire for comfort is negatively related to thewillingness; while both their need for fixed schedule and environmental consciousness havepositive impacts. And then travelers are clustered into several distinct segments by using thesethree attitudes and the willingness as segmentation variables in K-Means clustering. TheK-Means analysis gives six segments with varying willingness. Each segment is also a uniquecombination of cognitive and affective attitudes, suggesting that the same willingness can takeplace for different reasons and that the same attitude can lead to different willingness. The resultsof attitudinal market segmentation can also identify the potential ‘mode switchers’ and provideinformation for developing focused strategies to well serve the targeted segment and to promotemore bicycle usage.