World Journal of Management Vol. 6. No. 2. September 2015 Issue. Pp. 1 – 15 From Motor Biking to Public Transportation, What Matters in Hanoi? Poh Yen Ng* and Phung Thanh Phuong** The process of urbanisation brings a number of environment and transportation challenges to fast growing economies such as Vietnam. With a total number of 6 million registered vehicles (more than 80% are motorbikes), transportation is one of the biggest issues to deal with in the cities. Apart from daily traffic congestion and high accident rate, the sources of air pollution in its capital city, Hanoi have been proven to come mainly from motorbikes. It is also the most polluted city in South East Asia and is chosen as the research context. Many developing countries face similar challenges as a result of urbanisation and they have conducted extensive efforts to build a more sustainable environment using public transportation. This paper aims to find out factors influencing road users’ intention to use public transportation in Hanoi. A survey was carried out by randomly selecting 600 road users. Among the 525 completed questionnaire, around 83% of the respondents used public transportation before. However, only 30% of them are frequent users. Result shows that personal belief on ease of use of public transport and service satisfaction provided by Hanoi City Bus influenced their intention to use public transportation. On the other hand, environmental impact caused by the usage of private vehicle does not draw them to public transportation. The findings show that Hanoians were less motivated to use public transportation even they are living in a polluted environment caused by private vehicles. Policy makers are urged to improve on the accessibility, reliability, safety and responsiveness of public transportation to encourage private vehicle users to switch to public transportation. In addition, social influence was also found to influence the intention to use public transportation. Though ‘motor biking’ is a deep-rooted culture in Vietnam, policy makers can create a new culture of using public transportation that emphasis on social wellbeing to increase the conversion. Field of Research: Intention, public transportation, Vietnam 1. Introduction Vietnam is a developing country with a population of 90 million people as reported by the National Office for Population and Family Planning. Transportation is one of the biggest issues to deal with, especially in the two biggest cities: Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh (HCM), with respectively about 7.1 million people and 7.5 million people (Minh Luan 2013). The demand for transportation in both cities is huge. Most of the residents and travellers use private transportation such as motorbikes, cars and electric bicycles. Currently, there is only one public transportation option available in the cities: intra cities buses. *Dr. Poh Yen Ng, Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, United Arab of Emirates Email : pohyen.ng@hct.ac.ae **Ms Phung Thanh Phuong, Commerce of Centre and Management, RMIT University Vietnam Email : phuong.phung@rmit.edu.vn