What is significant for engagement in cycling and walking in South Korea? Applying value-belief-norm theory

Highlights

• The VBN theory well predicts active transport users’ behavior.

• Belief has a stronger impact on personal norm than social norm for cycling/walking.

• Walkers have a stronger effect of belief on personal norm than cyclists do.

• Belief and behavioral intention are more important for cyclists than for walkers.

• Value is more important for walkers compared to cyclists.

Abstract

The value-belief-norm (VBN) theory has been widely used to describe pro-sustainability behavior. Despite being used to examine issues of sustainable and public transport behavior, research using the VBN has largely overlooked the pro-environmental behavior of cyclists and walkers, which is extremely significant given the role of active transport in environmental and human health. Therefore, this study creates and verifies a conceptually comprehensive active transport (cycling/walking) research model employing VBN theory, with a moderating role of cycling/walking and comparing cyclists and walkers, and utilizing PLS-SEM, multi-group analysis (MGA), necessary condition analysis (NCA), and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Results revealed that value has a great effect on belief in walking/biking. However, belief has a stronger impact on personal norm than social norm, and also personal norm shows twice the impact on behavioral intention than social norm. Behavior to engage in cycling and walking is greatly influenced by behavioral intention. Walkers have a stronger relationship between belief and personal norm than cyclists. Cyclists have higher prediction power with social norm, while walkers have a higher prediction power with belief, personal norm, behavioral intention, and behavior. Importantly for sustainable transport planning and interventions, the cycling and walking groups distinctively different from each other in terms of solutions for outcome high level of active transport behavior.

Introduction

In South Korea (hereafter Korea), 37.4 % of the total population walked an average of five times for 30 min per week in 2020 (Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), 2022). During the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers in Korea, the subject of this paper, also demonstrated increased interest in biking, whether it be for leisure, tourism, or commuting, with 3.3 million of the country’s 13.4 million cyclists using bicycles daily (Korea Transport Institute (KOTI), 2022). Cycling and walking as forms of active transport have significant environmental, health, and social benefits (Kim and Hall, 2022a, Kim and Hall, 2021b). The development of theoretical understandings of active transport are important as they help provide insights for better targeted marketing and promotion to encourage greater public engagement in cycling and walking (Kim and Hall, 2022c, Kim et al., 2022b).

Norm activation theory originally utilized three major constructs (awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and personal norm) in explaining the formation of pro-social intention as well as behavior (Schwartz, 1977). In linking value theory as well as the new environmental paradigm (NEP) to the norm activation framework, value-belief-norm (VBN) theory has been shown to be a substantial predictor of individual environmental behavior including, for example, support for social movements such as environmentalism (Stern et al., 1999). The VBN theory includes predicting hotel consumers’ pro-environmental behavior with the theory of planned behavior (Han, 2015), eco-cruise purchasing intention with value-attitude-behavior (VAB) theory (similar to VBN theory) (Han et al., 2019), and environmentally sustainable consumer behavior (Han, 2021). With VAB theory, values have also been found to have great impact on personal and social norms relevant to consumer behavior, such as environmentally friendly dining (Kim et al., 2020), COVID-19 biosecurity interventions (Kim et al., 2021), and sustainable development goals (Kim and Hall, 2021a).

Active transport, such as cycling and walking, makes a distinctive contribution to environmental and human health, and also has become an important component of sustainable transport planning and placemaking strategies (Koh and Wong, 2013, Hall and Ram, 2019, Millward et al., 2013, Nielsen and Skov-Petersen, 2018). For instance, bikeability (the capacity of a landscape to be cycled) has been utilized as a means of expressing the probability that persons or groups of publics will select to cycle as a mode of mobility for commuting, utilitarian purposes, or leisure (Koh and Wong, 2013, Nielsen and Skov-Petersen, 2018). Walking is also an eco-friendly substitute for carbon-based motorized mobility as well as an essential form of physical health activity (Millward et al., 2013). Walkability has been a growing focus of urban planners as they seek to develop more sustainable built environments, that provides the advantages of accessibility, enhanced community relations, liveliness, air quality, and health (Hall and Ram, 2019). In addition, VAB theory has well predicted active transport users’ behavior (Kim and Hall, 2022b). VBN theory has also highly explained preventive travel behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kim et al., 2022a, Kim et al., 2022b) as well as volunteer tourists’ environmentally friendly behavior for supporting sustainable tourism development (Park et al., 2022).

Regardless of whether cycling or walking, the VBN theory has been used to explain active transport user preferences in urban areas (Lind et al., 2015) and parental travel mode choices for their children (Nordfjærn and Zavareh, 2017) but has only received limited application to issues of behavior. Despite the importance of the VBN theory in examining pro-environmental behavior as well as active and sustainable transport in terms of selecting travel modes (Lind et al., 2015, Nordfjærn and Zavareh, 2017), few studies have employed the VBN paradigm to explain cyclists and walkers’ behavior, along with the differences between the two main active transport modes. To bridge this gap, this study builds and tests a theoretically integrated research framework, applying the VBN theory and the moderating role of cycling and walking by partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with multi-group analysis (MGA) and comparing cyclist and walker groups by fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Accordingly, this research provides theoretical implications to the study literature and offers insights for active transport planners in terms of effectively promoting cycling and walking.