Attitudes, norms and difficulties underlying road sharing intentions as drivers and cyclists: Evidence from the Czech Republic

Cycling-inclusive urban planning is attracting attention worldwide because of the environmental, health, economic, and transport benefits inherent to cycling from the individual and the societal perspectives. The Czech Republic is one of the emerging cycling countries that are trying to promote and support cycling, but cycling mode shares are low because of the poor quality of the scarce infrastructure and the psychological barrier of the perceived lack of safety when cycling in mixed traffic. This study takes a multimodal approach based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and focuses on the factors underlying the willingness to share the road from the perspective of cyclists and drivers: positive attitudes toward cycling, positive attitudes toward cyclists’ behavior, social norms toward cycling and anxiety to share the road. A web-based questionnaire was tailor-designed and administered in the Czech Republic via social networks, web forums, and the Civinet network, and a hybrid bivariate-ordered model tested the behavioral framework. Results show that the willingness to share the road as a cyclist or as a driver relates positively to positive attitudes towards cycling and cyclists’ behavior, and negatively to the anxiety of sharing the road. Moreover, mediator effects are observed and a clear relation emerges between the experience on the road as both a cyclist and a driver on the willingness to share the road as a cyclist. Lastly, results show that the factors underlying road sharing intentions are related significantly to gender, travel habits, and perceived personal and infrastructure-related barriers to cycling.