The Literature Review is useful to establish the importance of the problem, whether in other contexts this issue is found and which methods were used by other researchers to analyse it. By carrying out this, the researcher can establish the relevance of this study, its contribution to the current literature but also its significance solving the research problem.
This research followed an integrative literature to explore the current State of Art of empirical research about perception and attitudes towards commuting cycling. Following as Souza et al. (2010), the review was integrative to include qualitative and quantitative studies available. The review aims to present a critical analysis of the
literature until 2017.
The review follows a four-phase method as suggested by Souza et al. (2010). In Figure 3 there is a description of the four stages of the process.
Figure 3 Flow diagram of stages of the Literature Review
Stage 1 Search criteria and
time delimitation
•Defining the criteria for the search •Delimitation of time
Stage 2 Sampling literature
•Sampling literature
•Scan of the selected literature
•Analysis of quality of papers and exclusion of those no relevant
Stage 3 Analysis
and Summary
•Reading, analysing and summarizing the articles •Critical analysis of the literature
Stage 4 Discussion
of results
•Systematic discussion of the literature •Reporting the discussion
2.3.1 Stage 1: Search Criteria and Time Delimitation
This stage comprises the search strategy. The strategy is based on the overview of the social and psychological barriers for cycling with combination of the constructs and keywords. The first search focuses on the theoretical frameworks used to analyse the link between attitudes and behaviour. This part explored the theoretical approaches used in transport studies and particularly for cycling studies. It also examines why the TPB is considered the most appropriate theoretical approach for the research problem based on empirical evidence and how other studies have previously used additional constructs from other theories to improve the ability of TPB to understand different phenomena.
The second search was carried out to investigate empirical evidence about the role of perceived image or identity attached to cyclists and attitudes influencing intention to cycle. The search was based on the research question one (What are the attitudes towards cycling in Mexico City?) and research question two (What is the perceived image or identity attached to cycling and cyclists in Mexico City?). A third search was targeted to explore empirical evidence about other socio-psychological factors influencing behavioural intention to cycle. It also investigated the link between socio-economic status and cycling commuting. Using keywords such as psychological factors/motivators and intention to cycle, and socioeconomic status/position and bicycle use. Search three was based upon research question three (What other socio-psychological factors influence intention to cycle in Mexico City?). A final search focuses on transport segments. This search was aimed to describe the state of art of the use of social marketing and segmentation techniques in transport studies, particularly for bicycle use. This search was based on the fourth research question about transport segments in Mexico City (Which are the main transport segments identified from the sample of the population?).
The sample characteristics were adults in a range of age from 18-60 and no commuting cyclists (or very occasional cyclists). The time
delimitation focuses on academic material published from 1997 to April 2017. The delimitation of time was fixed in consideration of the report for the Department of Transport carried out by Davies et al. (1997). In this report, the authors stressed that until then, research about attitudes influencing cycling was ‘relatively sparse’ and the existing literature was characterized for being descriptive instead of adopting a more scientific approach (Davies et al., 1997).
2.3.2 Stage 2: Sampling Literature
In this stage, the literature is scanned in more detail. It is analysed the quality of the material and selected the most appropriate
literature to be examined. The academic search engines used were Web of Science, Dialnet and Google Scholar. The search in the three engines included books, thesis, and articles (including citations). All sources were scanned to select only the studies to fit the criteria mentioned in stage one. Otherwise, the studies were excluded. This stage was divided into three steps. Step one was a search in electronic databases. The search was in articles and other
references (books, reports, and thesis) in any language by using three different search strings as explained in stage one and explored the title, keywords and the abstract. The step one search yielded 167 results in total, but only seven documents were relevant to this study. A substantial number of papers were excluded since most of them were not related to the behavioural intention to cycle. Other articles focused on different topics such as perception of risk or perception of performance. Besides, the samples used did not meet the criteria described before. Consequently, the initial search yielded a very small sample of articles.
The step two of the stage two consisted of a manual search in
journals. Using the academic database ScienceDirect the researcher identified the relevant literature and the years were more articles on the topic “perception and attitudes to cycle commuting” were
published. Therefore, the search was narrowed by selecting only publications title in Transport Research part A, F and D; Journal of Transport Geography; Transport Policy; Procedia Transport
Research; Social and Behavioural Sciences and Travel Behaviour and Society for being the most relevant to this study. This search yield 371 results. The Figure 4 below shows the evolution of the papers in this topic by year. In the graph can be seen that in 2005 there was a peak in the publications with 14, but then the number of the publications decrease until 2011 where the number increase to 24, and from there, the research produced increases steadily.
Figure 4 Evolution of publications of journal articles about perception and attitudes to cycling
Based on these results, the search was narrowed in the same database limiting the time for the publications to be from 2005 to 2017, having as results 327 articles. These results were analysed in more detail from the abstract, and after deleting the articles that did not match the initial criteria, the final sample from Science Direct was of 10 articles. The step three in the searching phase was reviewing references described in the selected studies (snowballing search). This process allowed the researcher to choose other 12 articles and two book chapters to add to the sample to be retrieved and analysed in more detail. At this step it was gathered a sample of 24 documents in total, but from the final detailed review the final sample included in
this review is 20 documents in total including articles and book chapters (see Appendix A).
2.3.3 Stage 3: Analysis and Summary
The third stage of the method followed in the literature review
consisted of reading, analysing and summarizing the articles. The full matrix with the details of each article reviewed it is found in Appendix A, at the end of the Thesis.
2.3.4 Stage 4: Discussion of Results
This stage consists of reporting the discussion of the results. Here there is the critical analysis and systematic discussion of the
literature. It was reviewed the validity of the methods and results from the sample and summarized the empirical research. The summary is divided into six different themes. The first theme is the theoretical approaches to investigate the link between attitudes and behaviour and the presentation of the proposed model of the extended version of TPB as the main approach to investigate our research problem. The second theme is about the role of attitudes towards cycling and the factors influencing attitudes. The third theme is the perceived image of cycling and identity attached to cyclists. The fourth theme is the existence of other socio-psychological factors influencing
behavioural intention to cycle. The fifth theme identified from the review is the socio-economic status attached to the image of cycling and cyclists and whether this might influence people’s intention to cycle. The sixth and final theme is about the use of social marketing and segmentation techniques for studying cycling.