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• Disruption type, management, and transit captivity level shape experienced severity. • Captivity strongly shapes disruption severity and users’ adaptive behaviour. • Captive users rely on replacement transit and show mostly short-term adaptation. • High-income users shift to cars or ride-hailing, with long-term behavioural change. • Adaptive behaviour depends on how operators act to manage and resolve disruptions. Public transport is prone to disruptions that undermine reliability, equity, and resilience. While existing literature reviews have largely focused on disruption management and network resilience as the supply side (e.g., network vulnerability, simulation, routing, and scheduling), passengers’ reactions remain comparatively underexplored. Yet disruptions inevitably trigger adaptive behaviours that vary with the severity of the disruption. Experienced severity is shaped by the disruption’s nature (type, scale, duration, frequency, modality), the management strategies (mitigation measures, provision of alternatives, pre-announcement), and the degree of users’ transit captivity. This study aims to examine the interplay between the experienced severity of public transport disruption and individual adaptive behaviour. To our knowledge, no prior review has provided an overview of how the nature of disruption, its management, and user captivity intersect to shape behavioural responses and what this means for equitable and sustainable disruption management. We conducted a systematic literature review using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) framework. Findings demonstrate that captivity strongly influences the experienced severity of disruptions and the adaptive behaviour. Captive users (low-income, carless, or living in low-substitutability areas) tend to continue using replaced transit services, and their adaptive behaviour is more short-term, while higher-income choice users more readily shift to private vehicles, ride-hailing, or flexible alternatives and are more prone to long-term behaviour change. Overall, the review shows that disruptions exacerbate inequalities by imposing disproportionate burdens on captive users. It also reveals critical research gaps: planned disruptions remain understudied, longitudinal intervention studies are rare, and most evidence comes from high-income countries. Addressing these gaps is essential to designing disruption management strategies that enhance resilience, promote sustainability, equity, and inclusive mobility.