Smartness-induced transport inequality: Privacy concern, lacking knowledge of smartphone use and unequal access to transport information

Abstract

In the context of continuous worldwide practices in building smart cities and promoting smart mobilities, the literature on the reproduction of transport inequality caused by unequal access to smartphone use is gradually increasing. In addition to physical access to smartphone use, this study contributes a new perspective from the privacy concern on (motivational access) and lack of knowledge (skill access) in using location-based service (LBS) to the understanding of unequal access to transport information during the transition to a smart city. Using a two-stage modelling approach to a dataset collected from two Chinese cities, the study found that women are vulnerable to restricted access to smart transport information due to the privacy concern on and lack of knowledge of using LBS. People aged over 50 tend to be restricted to the traditional source of transport information due to the lack of knowledge of using LBS. Moreover, city-sensitive factors should be considered. Muslims in Urumqi are vulnerable to restricted access to smart transport information compared with Han Chinese because of the lack of knowledge of using LBS. In Wuhan, manual workers/attendants are vulnerable to restricted access to smart transport information compared with those working in offices for the same reason. The lack of knowledge affects the transformation from a traditional source user to a smart source user, whereas the privacy concern restrains individuals from using multiple smart sources. From these findings, policy recommendations for mitigating the smartness-induced unequal access to transport information are proposed.