Public Opinion Survey on Transportation Services in Hong Kong 2019Back

Research Background

In February 2019, Uber Hong Kong commissioned Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong to conduct a territory-wide survey, which aims at gauging citizens’ satisfaction level with the personalized point-to-point transportation services in Hong Kong and their views on the regulation of such services.

The research instrument used in this study was designed by POP after consulting Uber, but both parties have the right to veto the final design. All fieldwork operations, data collection and data analysis were conducted independently by POP without interference from any party. In other words, POP was given full autonomy to design and conduct the survey. It takes full responsibility for all the findings reported here.

Research Design

Telephone interviews were conducted by interviewers under close supervision. All data were collected by our interviewers using a Web-based Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (Web-CATI) system invented by the research team which allowed real-time data capture and consolidation. To ensure data quality, on top of on-site supervision, voice recording, screen capturing and camera surveillance were used to monitor the interviewers’ performance.

Telephone numbers are randomly generated using known prefixes (including both landline and mobile numbers) assigned to telecommunication services providers under the Numbering Plan provided by the Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA). Invalid numbers are then eliminated according to computer and manual dialing records to produce the final sample.

The target population of this survey was Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong citizens of age 18 or above. For landline samples, when telephone contact was successfully established with a target household, one eligible subject was interviewed. If more than one eligible subject had been available, selection was made using the “next birthday rule” which selected the person who had his/her birthday next. The survey was conducted during the period of March 25 to 27, 2019. A total of 515 eligible subjects were successfully interviewed, including 290 landline samples and 225 mobile samples. The effective response rate of this survey was 70.1%, and the standard sampling error for percentages based on this sample was less than 2.2 percentage points. In other words, the sampling error for all percentages using the total sample was less than plus/minus 4.4 percentage points at 95% confidence level.

To ensure representativeness of the findings, the raw data have been rim-weighted according to figures provided by the Census and Statistics Department. The gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population came from “Mid-year population for 2017”, while the educational attainment (highest level attended) distribution and economic activity status distribution came from “Women and Men in Hong Kong - Key Statistics (2018 Edition)”.

Materials prepared by Sponsor

• Infographic (pdf format only)


• Press Release (pdf format only)