Information about Transport Scotland
Sources of information about Transport Scotland
Almost nine in ten respondents (87%) had heard of Transport Scotland before completing the survey, the same proportion as in the last three waves of the survey. Respondents aged 35 and over were more likely to have heard of Transport Scotland than those aged under 35 (91%, compared with 76%).
The most common source of information on Transport Scotland was online (on the internet or social media), mentioned by 57% of respondents (Figure 8.1). The next most common sources were road signs (44%), television (39%) and the radio (35%).
In comparison to 2019, a greater proportion of respondents said they had heard about Transport Scotland online (57%, compared with 38% in 2019) or on roads signs (44%, compared with 35%).
(Note that the change in survey method is likely to have contributed towards the increase in those reporting the internet or social media as an information source - those completing an online survey are more likely to be active online and therefore more likely to hear about Transport Scotland this way.)
Those aged 55 and above were more likely than average to mention television as a source of information about Transport Scotland (51%, compared with 39% overall). Meanwhile, those aged 65 and above were less likely than average to mention the internet or social media (41%, compared with 57%).
Use of Traffic Scotland information sources
Just over half of respondents (55%) had used an online information source provided by Traffic Scotland, with the website being the most commonly mentioned (Table 8.1).
| Source | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | 37 | 35 | 34 | 38 | 43 | 45 | 45 | 40 | 41 |
| Twitter feed | 2 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 15 |
| Smartphone App | 4 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 7 |
| Internet radio | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 7 |
| Base (all who had access to the internet) | 1,558 | 1,617 | 1,735 | 1,797 | 1,812 | 1,830 | 1,841 | 2,008 | 1,259 |
Older respondents, aged 65 and over, were more likely than average to say that they had not used any of these Transport Scotland online sources of information (55%, compared with 43% overall) while younger people, aged 18-24, were most likely to have used the Traffic Scotland Twitter feed (34%, compared with 15% overall).
Views of the Traffic Scotland online information sources were largely positive with most respondents rating each as being ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ good (Figure 8.2).
(When rating online information sources, if a respondent had used more than one source of online information, they were asked to give their views on just one of these sources (randomly selected by the online script.)