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The global target to achieve inclusive public transportation includes the availability of courtesy seating for vulnerable individuals such as elderly people, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and children. The frequent usage of courtesy seats by passengers who are not vulnerable individuals is an issue pertaining to public transportation. It is important to encourage the travelers to yield seats in the presence of vulnerable individuals because the latter might get seriously injured by falling if they stay on a moving vehicle. This study explores the influence of incentives and situational factors affecting individuals’ decisions to yield seats to vulnerable people. Through an online questionnaire survey, 404 valid responses were obtained. The generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) with repeated measures was used to identify the influential factors affecting the self-reported decisions of yielding seats to vulnerable individuals. The results indicate that the situational factors (health, crowd, vulnerable passenger type, standing time after yielding seats), incentive types, and incentive amounts are significant factors affecting the decisions to yield seats. The study’s findings also indicate that travelers are more sensitive to people with disabilities and pregnant women than to elderly people and children. The practical implications, including campaigning, education interventions, and incentive-based mechanism, were suggested to encourage travelers to yield seats to vulnerable individuals.

Partial filling of a porous medium in a channel of a certain configuration attracts attention, as it tends to enhance convective heat transfer while reducing pressure drop remarkably, as compared t...

Metro travelers’ travel experience is highly influenced by fellow passengers’ misbehaviors such as eating or littering in the carriage and sound blaster, which are common in the metro carriage. Although operators have implemented various regulations to reduce misbehavior, little theoretical research has investigated such behavior motivators to provide targeted guidelines for specific passenger segments. To this end, this study explores how demographic and perceived social norms of university students affect their misbehaviors, i.e., eating in the carriage, public display of affection, sound blaster, cross-legged sitting, leaning against the pole, and littering, in the metro carriage of Shanghai, China. With the structural equation model, it is revealed that both injunctive and descriptive norms impose significant impacts on passengers’ inappropriate behaviors, with the effect of the former generally to a greater degree. Gender heterogeneity in passenger misbehavior is also observed, where males significantly perform better in eating in the carriage and cross-legged sitting. These findings may decode the underlying motivation of passenger misbehaviors and provide guidelines for effective intervention with targeted policy design and implementation.