Study On Choice Of School Travel Mode During COVID-19 Pandemic

Chinese government has formulated measures to alleviate the urban traffic congestion due to the sharp decline in the proportion of active school travel and public transit.The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused unprecedented impact on urban public transportation services.Travelers,especially parents,prefer private cars to public transit because their perception of the risk of the epidemic is higher than the actual risk level of the epidemic.The switch of travel modes caused by parents’ risk assessment of the epidemic has increased the proportion of motorized school travel,exacerbating urban traffic congestion.It is a necessity to explore the internal influence mechanism of mode choice of school travel mode under COVID-19,and to reshape commuters,especially parents’ confidence in public transit.This study focused on choice behavior of school travel,to analyze the internal mechanism of the influence of various attributes on parents’ intentions in public transit,private car and walking.Based on the foundation of previous studies,the Protection Motivation Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior were integrated,and trust and perceived built environment were added.This study established a measurement scale that meets the characteristics of parental behavior and decision-making and evaluated the reliability and validity of the collected data.Because the process of parent’s decision-making is not completely linear,this study applied a combination of structural equation model and artificial neural network to study the internal mechanism between psychological factors.To further analyze the influence of economic attribute variables,travel attribute variables and psychological variables on school travel mode choices,and a hybrid choice model with psychological factors was established.The research results found that objective variables such as family socioeconomic attributes,children’s gender and age,and the distance from home to school could influence school travel choices;as most important factors,risk assessment factors,namely perceived severity and perceived vulnerability,could influence the choice of public transit and private car,and perceived built environment is the most important factor influencing walking travel modes,and also verified the applicability of the extended fusion model of the Protection Motivation Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior in this field.This research applied the structural equation model-artificial neural network and the discrete choice model to conduct a more comprehensive and systematic analysis and discussion of the decision-making of parents’ school travel mode selection under COVID-19 epidemic for the first time.Research results could help the government and traffic management departments formulate relevant policies and measures under the impact of the current epidemic.