ANALYSIS OF THE LEVEL OF USER AWARENESS OF SAFETY IN USING PUBLIC BUS TRANSPORTATION IN BATAM CITY

Abstract

Safety awareness among public transport users is a critical component of traffic safety and sustainable urban mobility, yet empirical evidence focusing on passenger-centred behaviour remains limited in developing city contexts. This study examines the level of safety awareness among city bus passengers, identifies factors associated with different awareness levels, and proposes planning-oriented recommendations to enhance public transport safety. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining a questionnaire survey, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), ordinal logistic regression, and in-depth interviews. The descriptive results indicate that most passengers demonstrate a moderate level of safety awareness, suggesting that basic safety knowledge exists but has not been fully internalised into consistent behaviour across all stages of the journey. The EFA confirms that safety awareness is a multidimensional construct consisting of three domains: boarding safety awareness, on-board safety behaviour, and alighting safety practices. Ordinal logistic regression analysis reveals that demographic characteristics, particularly age and gender, are significant predictors of safety awareness levels, with older passengers and female users more likely to exhibit higher awareness. In contrast, experience of safety incidents, exposure to safety information, and frequency of bus use do not show statistically significant effects, although their positive coefficient directions indicate a supportive role. Qualitative findings further suggest that inexperienced users tend to exhibit riskier behaviours and that learning through experience and information requires structured reinforcement. Overall, the findings highlight that passenger safety awareness is shaped by an interaction between individual characteristics, learning processes, and institutional context. This study contributes to traffic safety research by applying ordinal modelling to passenger safety awareness and provides evidence-based implications for safer public bus systems in medium-sized cities.