Determinants of Bicycle Use among Student Population: Exploratory Research of Social and Infrastructure Factors  
[PERSON]  
1 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering and Architecture, University of Maribor, Smetanova ulica 17, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS]  
[PERSON]  
2 Institute for Social Studies, Science and Research Centre Koper, Garibaldiyeva ulica 1, 6000 Koper, Slovenia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS]  
[PERSON]  
3 Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, Koroska cesta 160, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia; [EMAIL_ADDRESS]  
[PERSON]  
4 Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering and Architecture, University of Maribor, Smetanova ulica 17, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia  
4 Correspondence: [EMAIL_ADDRESS]; Tel.: +386-51-37513  
By exposing more benefits than shortcomings, we focus on university students as a significant target group that could use and promote cycling as the main transport mode in cities (as opposed to the use of personal motorized vehicles). As young and presumably healthy adults, students have the physical capacity to cycle; allegedly, they should have more knowledge, motivation, and awareness about sustainability issues. On the other hand, they usually have fewer financial resources than employed people, this being only one crucial issue that could contribute to their more frequent use of bicycles. In fact, students should be considered as relevant forerunners for cycling in cities, but how does this look in practice?  
The purpose of this paper was to elaborate on the determinants of bicycle use. We focused on infrastructure factors and social traits. This article addressed (a) the barriers and motivations for cycling among tertiary education learners--university students--to find out whether the quality of infrastructure or the social traits (and which in particular) had a bigger impact on the frequency of cycling among students. Secondly, the purpose was (b) to gain a more accurate insight through the case study of students cycling in the University of Maribor, for example, how they perceived different factors (e.g., the fear of theft, the importance of cycling with friends, lack of bicycle stands). Above all, we wanted to present the percentage of students cycling regularly, occasionally, or never, within the selected sample. The gained data can contribute to a better understanding of the perception of cycling from a young person's point of view. Nevertheless, this can also contribute to measures that need to be taken into account in order to improve the current state of infrastructure in cities or to improve communication and raise awareness.  
Additionally, we put emphasis on smaller-size European cities with a population size between 50,000 and 150,000 people, focusing particularly on those that have universities. By the term 'university cities', we consider cities in which there are one or more university campuses that play an important role in the local economy. Smaller size cities are, in general, often underrepresented in terms of urban research [5], moreover in relation to cycling habits of students. Therefore, the gap in the research was addressed by establishing the connection between the importance of cycling among the student population in smaller-size university cities, which could potentially present a common case of high impact regarding sustainable mobility. At the starting position, smaller size cities have one obvious advantage compared to the cities of larger scale--shorter distances--which are favorable to cycling.  
The working hypotheses were (a) there should be more cyclists among students compared to the city's average (if the data were available), in the sense that university students could and should be the promotors of cycling in cities, and (b) the quality of infrastructure has a stronger influence on the decision as to whether students will cycle or not compared with the selected social traits.