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9In 1999, the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) released TCRP Report 63: Enhancing the Visibility and Image of Transit in the United States and Canada (1). Then TCRP initiated Project B-32, Understanding How to Motivate Communities to Support and Ride Public Transportation as a further step toward making transit more significant to peo- ple, specifically, to identify communication themes that rep- resent the greatest opportunity to build support for public transit. The communication themes were developed using guidance from available information inside and outside of the transit industry and through custom survey research data in a comprehensive program of in-depth exploratory interviews and statistically reliable quantitative surveys. To successfully identify actions that support public transit, the custom sur- vey research was designed to ⢠Identify current values, perceptions, and decision-making processes that lead to behaviors that support public trans- portation, and ⢠Determine the most effective methods for motivating indi- viduals to take action in support of public transportation. This rest of this report is structured as follows: Chapter 2 summarizes the research approach and discusses the primary research methodology. Chapter 3 includes a review of secondary research sources, including prior research and case studies, and includes the following: ⢠Descriptions of perceptions of public transportation among the general public and specific demographic groups. This section also examines factors that influence these percep- tions, focusing on personal values identified in transit- related market research. ⢠Summaries of current marketing practices in the transit industry, with a particular emphasis on two national pro- grams, Public Transportation Partnership for Tomorrow campaign (PT)2 in the United States and Visibility, Image, and Positioning (VIP) in Canada. This section also identi- fies the opportunities and challenges that the industry faces. ⢠Discussion of marketing and research practices from other industries, paying special attention to the relationship between attitudes, values, and behavior. Chapter 4 describes the primary research conducted for this study and includes the following: ⢠The learning from the in-depth exploratory phase, con- ducted with the general public. The range of perceptions on transit and its riders, possible ways people support tran- sit, and the belief systems people hold are examined. ⢠Discussion of the preliminary quantitative interviews, which were conducted to reduce the lists of variables for use in the final questionnaire for the full quantitative survey. ⢠Details of the results of the full quantitative survey. This sec- tion examines the measures used in deriving the drivers of transit support, including awareness and use of local tran- sit, perceptions of transit and its specific characteristics, transit-supporting behaviors, and personal deep-rooted values. The chapter concludes with an examination of the variables most strongly associated with support. Chapter 5 examines the variables most strongly associated with support for public transportation, by building on the survey results summarized in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 highlights the factors that motivate transit-supportive behaviors. Chapter 6 presents the marketing strategies and communi- cation themes that the research team believes will be effective in motivating more people to support public transit in their communities. The appendices, which are available for download from the TRB website, provide a full discussion on detailed area sampling procedures and sample balancing, respondent selection in- structions, interviewing protocols, dates of data collection, âfa- vorabilityâ ratings of the current research versus 1999 results, qualitative guides, survey instruments, and a description of the multivariate procedures used. C H A P T E R 1 Introduction
