Context-specific determinants of public institutions' participation in transportation demand management: Evidence from South Korea's weekly no-driving day program

This study investigates whether participation determinants in South Korea's Weekly No Driving Day (WNDD) program, a voluntary transportation demand management initiative targeting public institutions, operate uniformly across regional contexts. Despite nationwide implementation, uniform directives fail to account for substantial variations in local transit infrastructure and spatial conditions. Existing research has examined aggregate effectiveness or single-city cases but has not systematically analyzed how institutional and locational factors jointly shape participation across diverse settings. Drawing on multilevel analysis of 1030 public institutions across 181 municipalities, we examine which institutional and locational factors drive current participation and future intentions, and whether these determinants differ between urban and rural contexts. This hierarchical approach is necessary because institutions are nested within municipalities. Results reveal fundamentally different participation mechanisms. Institutions in urban areas exhibit minimal municipal clustering, indicating that participation depends primarily on institutional perceptions. Institutions in rural areas show substantially higher clustering, demonstrating that regional infrastructure and structural barriers play critical roles. Context-specific subgroup analysis uncovers that aggregate models can mask reversed relationships across contexts, and that transit improvements yield higher marginal returns in rural areas despite lower baseline availability. Policy scenario simulations demonstrate that optimal intervention packages differ fundamentally across contexts. Urban areas achieve high participation through education and incremental transit improvements, while rural areas require comprehensive packages integrating measures to alleviate property rights concerns, localized education, and strategic transit investments. These findings demonstrate that effective transportation demand management requires context-tailored strategies rather than uniform national policies.