Adoption of public transport among Malaysian university students: extending the Technology Acceptance Model with trust in government

Abstract Increasing public transport adoption is important for reducing dependence on private vehicles, thereby helping to lower transport-related emissions and support urban climate goals. Despite substantial public investment, public transport ridership in Malaysia remains low, suggesting that infrastructure improvements alone may be insufficient to shift travel behaviour. This underscores the need to understand the behavioral and contextual factors underlying public transport adoption. This study applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to examine how perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use shape behavioral intention to use public transport, while considering trust in government as a contextual factor in public service delivery. A cross-sectional survey of 122 Malaysian university students measured perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust in government, and behavioral intention. An exploratory path analysis indicated that trust in government significantly predicted both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, while perceived usefulness emerged as the most immediate predictor of behavioral intention. The findings suggest that increasing public transport adoption requires more than infrastructure investment alone; it also depends on building institutional trust and improving usability in ways that enhance the perceived usefulness of public transport.