| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates whether there is a difference in trip satisfaction between regular cyclists and e-bikers. The electric bicycle (e-bike) has experienced a rapid increase in the last years (Plazier et al., 2017). In the Netherlands, 40% of the sold bicycles were e-bikes in 2018 (de Haas et al., 2022). It is widely studied and concluded that commuters who cycle are the most satisfied with their trip. There are multiple reasons why this group is the most satisfied. There has been a lot of research on the e-bike, but it isn’t clear what the position of the e- bike is in the list of happiest commuters. Especially in contrast to the regular bicycle. It is important to understand these levels of satisfaction between the two types of bicycles because it can help to encourage the use of the e-bike over the use of the car (St-Louis et al., 2014). It is also important to get to know the advantages of e-biking to get to know the mental health advantages, rather than only the physical health advantages. The research question that is answered in this thesis is: “Do e-bike users have a higher trip satisfaction on their ride to and from the different locations of the Utrecht University compared to regular bicycle users?”
Data from the three-yearly mobility survey that was held at the Utrecht University (UU) has been made available for this research. This survey provides a detailed view on mobility opinions and commuting habits of a lot of students, PhD students, and staff members. The satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS) by Ettema et al. (2011) was used to gauge participants' satisfaction with their commutes. The STS consists of nine different items that respondents could answer with a rating between -4 and 4. These nine items are then grouped into three new scales: positive deactivation, positive activation, and cognitive evaluation. Each respondent's satisfaction with travel scores were created by averaging their responses to each of the three subscales. After that, each respondent's individual satisfaction with travel score was created by averaging their responses to all nine items into the new dependent variable STS total. This means that there have been created four multiple linear regression models. The statistics program SPSS was used for these analyses.
In three of the four different regression models, the change in R-square is very small when the variable ‘mode’ is added. This means that mode choice (riding a regular bicycle or an e- bike) doesn’t have a significant influence on the commuter trip satisfaction (STS score). Only in the cognitive evaluation the independent variable ‘mode’ is significant. In this model it means that the regular bicycle group experiences their commute as less easy and less comfortable than the e-biker group. Control variable ‘age’ seems to have an influence on trip satisfaction in all four models. It seems that the older the people are, the higher the trip satisfaction. The answer to the research question sounds as follows: “E-bikers only experience a significant higher trip satisfaction than regular cyclists in the cognitive evaluation model. This means that e-bikers are more satisfied in terms of easy use and comfort. In the other three models, there doesn’t seem to be a significant difference between the two groups." | |
