ASSESSMENT OF WILLINGNESS TO USE PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN LAHORE, EFFECTS OF HEALTH, INCOME, AGE AND PERCEIVED QUALITY

Abstract

Public transport is an essential element of a country’s economy and infrastructure. More usage of public transport by people has many beneficial effects like less pollution, less traffic, less accidents and growth of economy. In Pakistan people generally prefer private vehicles for transportation, which is causing problems like accidents, pollution and traffic jams in big cities. Purpose of this research was to study some of the factors that affect willingness to use public transport of Lahore’s inhabitants. Lahore is one of the biggest cities of Pakistan and is suffering from terrible case of air pollution, one of the big reasons of air pollution is smoke from vehicles, So, if there are less vehicles on roads of Lahore, it can decrease the air pollution significantly. In this quantitative research data was collected using an online questionnaire and was analyzed using SPSS software. The results of this study reveal that concern for health and better perceived quality enhances the willingness to of people to use public transport, while we did not find any significant impact of age on willingness to use public transport, it was revealed from the results that having more income and resources means less willingness to use public transport. It is recommended to future studies to take large samples from all over the country and study other factors as well.