Environmental, Social, and Personal Correlates of Cycling for Transportation in a Student Population
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Objective:
To examine the association between environmental, social, and personal factors and cycling for transportation among university students.
Methods:
Five hundred and thirty-eight university students participated in the questionnaire study. Multi-nominal regression analysis was applied to identify associations between independent variables and cycling behavior.
Results:
Forty-one percent of the students were regular cyclists and 15% irregular cyclists. Regular cycling was negatively associated with the perception of traffic safety and positively associated with high safety from bicycle theft, many friends cycling to the university, high emotional satisfaction, little physiological effort, and high mobility. Irregular cycling was positively related with environmental attractiveness and little physiological effort.
Conclusions:
Improving bicycle parking security and promoting peer support for and positive psychological experiences and convenient mobility of cycling may increase this transport mode among university students.
Titze and Janschitz are with the University of Graz, Austria; Titze is with the Institute of Sport Science and Janschitz is with the Institute of Geography and Regional Science. Stronegger is with the Institute of Social Medicine and Epidemiology, Medical University of Graz, Austria. Oja is with the UKK Institute, Tampere, Finland and Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
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