An exploration of the reciprocal relationships between bicycling attitudes, skills, and behavior on a college campus

Attitude-behavior studies in the field of travel behavior have traditionally considered attitude as a determinant of behavior without analyzing the reciprocal relationship. This omission has foundational implications for both theory testing and refinement, as well as consequences for attempts to derive policy from research findings. In this study, we examine the reciprocal relationships between bicycling behavior, attitudes, and skill. We seek to compare the relative strength of the reciprocal relationships and provide policy suggestions based on the results. We assembled a longitudinal panel of undergraduate students from the University of California, Davis by connecting their responses across multiple years of an annual campus travel survey. Using a cross-lagged panel model, we find strong, statistically significant stability relationships for all three dependent variables and find that bicycle use has a moderate, positive influence on skill in the subsequent year. Our results also suggest that bicycling attitudes have a moderate, positive relationship with behavior in the following year, while there is limited evidence for the influence of bicycling behavior on attitudes. This research suggests that context and life stage may have moderating effects on the reciprocal relationships; among our sample of undergraduate students, bicycling behavior has limited to no influence on behavior attitudes, in contrast to previous studies’ findings among the general population. Furthermore, bicycling behavior in college helps develop bicycling skills, which may have enduring impacts and supports the notion that educational institutions can play an important role in preparing students for active travel later in life.