Date of Award

8-2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management

Committee Member

Dr. H. Charles Chancellor, Committee Chair

Committee Member

Dr. DeWayne D. Moore

Committee Member

Dr. Lauren N. Duffy

Committee Member

Dr. Robert D. Bixler

Abstract

Over the past two decades, bicycle share programs (BSPs) have developed rapidly around the world, with studies finding that people use such service not only for commuting but also for leisure. However, compared to utilitarian BSP users, limited research has focused on the factors influencing BSP use for leisure experiences. To begin this limitation in the current cycling literature, this dissertation explores the key determinants of leisure BSP use. The extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology proposed by Venkatesh, Thong, and Xu (2012) and the dual-attitudes model conceptualized by Wilson, Lindsey, and Schooler (2000) provided the theoretical framework guiding this research. First, this dissertation developed the Unified Measurement of Bicycle Share Program Use (UMBSPU), an encompassing scale for further investigation of factors influencing an individual's leisure BSP use. The results of the measurement invariance testing and method effect examination indicated that this scale, which includes eight constructs and thirty-three measurement items, is a reliable, valid measurement. Second, this dissertation applied the UMBSPU to examine the influences of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, social influence, price value, hedonic motivation, and habit on Taipei citizens' intentions to use BSP and their actual use in leisure time. Among all factors examined, habit demonstrated the strongest predict validity of use intention. Furthermore, behavioral intention outperformed habit and facilitating conditions in explaining the variance of actual use. Finally, this dissertation used two Single Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IATs) to explore BSP users' implicit attitudes toward leisure cycling and leisure cyclists. Explicit attitudes toward leisure cycling and social identity with leisure cyclists were also measured and compared with implicit attitudes, the results indicating that implicit attitudes did not significantly predict leisure BSP use. However, social identity exhibited a strong predictability of an individual's public bicycle riding frequency. Future research is needed to cross-validate the UMBSPU in different contexts and to compare the results from the leisure cycling and cyclists ST-IAT across different types of cyclist groups.

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