Transport behaviour and diffusion of telematics: a conceptual framework and empirical application

The potential impacts that may be expected from new information and telecommunicationsystems applied to transport are considerable. However, as is the case with anynew technological innovation, at the basis of success of transport telematics lies theacceptance by potential users, which suggests that there is a clear need to investigatethe user side of these technologies. Given this need to explore the interactionbetween human behaviour and transport telematics, the aim of this paper is toinvestigate behavioral factors and their interrelationships in the use and diffusion ofnew telematics technologies. We will focus our attention on those systems whichprovide information to various categories of users, viz. public transport users andprivate car users.A conceptual framework is presented that covers all variables of interest for theinvestigation of user responses to these technologies. An important explanatoryvariable for acceptance of new telematics technologies is user segmentation; it has tobe recognized that the effects of respective technological innovations will varybetween various groups of transport users. In analyzing in more detail the dynamics of