Understanding daily car use: Driving habits, motives, attitudes, and norms across trip purposes

This paper presents a classification of motives considered as relevant when selecting a mode of transport, and it examines the relative importance of driving habits, car attitudes, descriptive norms and motives for transport mode choices for commuting, shopping, leisure and child-related trips. A survey was sent by post to 3000 Swedish residents in metropolitan, semi-rural and rural areas (with a response rate of 34.6%). Through an ordinal factor analysis, three classes of motives were extracted: Perceived outcomes, Symbolic and Instrumental motives. Hierarchical proportional odds logistic regression and hierarchical linear regression models assess the relative importance of socio-demographic variables, motives, descriptive norms, car attitudes and driving habits for each kind of trip. These models indicate that the impact of socio-demographic and psychological variables varies across trip purposes. Commuting and child- related trips were primarily predicted by socio-demographic variables. Leisure and shopping trips were mostly predicted by driving habit. Driving habit was a common and strong predictor among all trip purposes. These results are evidence of the power of script-based trips to generate habitual travel behaviours across different trip purposes. Conclusions are made in the light of the usefulness of these results to practitioners and researchers who aim to foster sustainable transportation and to reduce private car use

Mobility styles and car sharing use in Europe: attitudes, behaviours, motives and sustainability

Abstract What are the profiles of both users and non-users of car sharing in European cities regarding their travel patterns and psychological aspects? Two subsamples (1519 users and 3695 non-users of car sharing) participated in a survey, translated into seven languages, with 36 questions regarding attitudes towards car sharing, the environment, political orientation, personal norms, frequency of use of different transport modes and transport mode choice for different travel purposes. Through a hierarchical cluster analysis, five distinct mobility styles were identified, with no a priori restriction of the number of clusters. The mobility styles were further characterised by sociodemographic variables and by the motives for making use of car sharing. This paper discusses the implications of research based decision-making and urban planning in a way that guarantees long-term human and environmental security

Gender and cross-country differences in the determinants of sustainable diet intentions: A multigroup analysis of the UK, China, Sweden, and Brazil

Introduction: Gender differences have been identified in both the engagement in and the determinants of sustainable diet behaviours. However, as engagement in pro-environmental behaviours varies across countries, the consistency of gender differences could follow similar patterns. Understanding the factors underlying gender and country differences in diet intentions is important for determining how to promote sustainable diets in different populations. Methods: Using survey data from the UK, China, Sweden and Brazil (N=4,569), this paper examines the influence of subjective norms, diet-related identity, perceived status of meat consumption, environmental identity and environmental concern on sustainable diet intentions. Multigroup analysis was used to explore gender and country differences in the influence of these variables, and whether gender differences were consistent across the four countries. Results: The findings show that there are gender differences in the influence of diet-related identity and perceived status of meat consumption, as well as cross-country differences in all factors except subjective norms. Holding a strong diet-related meat identity negatively affected sustainable diet intentions in all groups. Crucially, however, gender differences are not consistent across countries. Discussion: These results suggest that individuals’ intentions to engage in sustainable diet behaviours are influenced by nationally unique gender associations

Cluster Analysis for Diminishing Heterogeneous Opinions of Service Quality Public Transport Passengers

[EN] One of the principal measures that public transport administrations are following for reaching a sustainable transportation in the cities consists on attract a higher number of citizens towards the use of public transport modes, by offering high quality services. Collecting users opinions is the best way of detecting where the service is failing and which aspects are been provided successfully. The main problem that has to be faced for analyzing service quality is the subjective nature of its measurement, offering heterogeneous assessments among passengers about the service. Stratifying the sample of users on segments of passengers which have more uniform opinions about the service can help to reduce this heterogeneity. This stratification usually is conducted based on the social and demographic characteristics of the passengers. However, there are more advance techniques that permits to identify more homogeneous groups of users. One of these techniques is the Cluster Analysis, which is a data mining technique that can be used for segmenting the sample of passengers on groups that share some common characteristics, and that have more homogeneous perceptions about the service. This technique has been applied in other fields of transport engineering but it has never been applied for searching homogeneous groups of users with regards to service quality evaluation in a public transport service. For this reason, the aim of this work is to find groups of passengers that perceive the quality of the service in a more homogeneous way, and to apply to this clusters a suitable statistic technique that permit us to discover which are the variables that more influence the passengers¿ overall evaluation about the service. The comparison among the results of each cluster will show considerable differences among them and also with the results obtained using the global sample.This study is sponsored by the Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Economía of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) through the Excellence Research Project denominated Q-METROBUS-Quality of service indicator for METROpolitan public BUS transport services . The authors also acknowledge the Granada Consorcio de Transportes for making the data set available for this study. Likewise, Griselda López wishes to express her acknowledgement to the regional ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science of the regional government of Andalusia (Spain) for their scholarship to train teachers and researchers in Deficit AreasDe Oña, R.; López-Maldonado, G.; Díez De Los Ríos, F.; De Oña, J. (2014). Cluster Analysis for Diminishing Heterogeneous Opinions of Service Quality Public Transport Passengers. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 162:459-466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.227S45946616

Energy behaviors at the office: An intervention study on the use of equipment

The study tests two behavioral intervention programs that were aimed at changing energy-related behaviors in an office setting. Participants were 93 office employees in three different departments of a construction company. Each department was randomly assigned to a four-week intervention to one of the following three conditions: control, intervention program or intervention program with group identity salience. The first intervention condition consisted of goal-setting, feedback, information and prompts. The second condition was identical to the first, with an additional group-identity manipulation. Three different types of data were collected: consumption of electricity and paper, pre-and post-questionnaires and weekly observations. The results show that the employees in the two experimental conditions perceived themselves to have changed their behaviors more than the control group. This is supported by the observational data for the intervention program, but could not be shown in the measures of energy consumption, which showed a decrease for all three departments. The implications of these results are discussed. \ua9 2015 Elsevier Ltd

The Psychology of Sharing: Multigroup Analysis among Users and Non-Users of Carsharing

The present study investigates the determinants of intention to use carsharing services by an integrated model of psychological predictors of travel behavior. The model proposed is tested by multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) in structural equation modeling (SEM) with further discussion about analysis of invariance and its relevance for comparisons between groups. The sample was classified into four groups: Italian users, Italian non-users, Swedish users, and Swedish non-users of carsharing. The users were respondents who have used or are currently using carsharing, while non-users reported never using the carsharing services. The analysis of data from 6072 respondents revealed that control was the main predictor of intention to use carsharing; driving habits had stronger negative effects for users of carsharing than for non-users; subjective norms positively predicted the intention to use carsharing among all groups; trust was a predictor of intention only for the Italian groups; and climate morality had a small negative effect on the Swedish groups only. The outcomes of this investigation will increase the knowledge about the use of carsharing and help to identify the behavioral and psychological factors that primarily influence people’s intention to use it

Bilens roll för människors subjektiva välbefinnande

Huvudsyftet med projektet var att öka kunskapen om bilens roll för olika hushålls och individers subjektiva välbefinnande. Subjektivt välbefinnande som kommer från engelskans subjective well-being, förkortat SWB i rapporten, definieras som människors egna bedömningar av sin livstillfredsställelse. Undersökningen belyser samspelet mellan aktivitetsmönster, vardagligt resande, tillgång till bil, motiv till bilresande, tillfredsställelse med vardagligt resande och subjektivt välbefinnande hos individer och hushåll med olika sociala, demografiska och materiella förutsättningar. Undersökningen har gjorts dels genom analyser av resor gjorda i anslutning till olika aktiviteter med hjälp av resvanedata från cirka 17 000 personer framtagna av Sika, 2007. Dels med en enkätstudie till 3000 hushåll som genomförts av projektgruppen. Enkätens svarsfrekvens var 45 procent. Enkätstudien visade att det fanns två typer av motiv till varför man kör eller åker bil, dels instrumentella – oberoende motiv som att det är tidsbesparande och praktiskt samt om frihet och att kunna bestämma själv, dels symboliska – affektiva motiv som status, identitet samt upplevda positiva känslor i samband med bilkörningen. Ett resultat från undersökningen är att deltagarnas subjektiva välbefinnande hade ett samband med skattningar av känslomässiga sk affektiva reaktioner (dvs hur de kände sig) när de utförde vardagliga aktiviteter utanför hemmet, de flesta rutinbetonade. Man upplevde generellt ett högre välbefinnande ju mer positiva dessa skattningar var. Förutom de känslomässiga reaktionerna, som troligen huvudsakligen beror på avsaknad av tidspress och stress, är dessa aktiviteter instrumentella för att uppnå viktiga mål i form av biologiska behov, sociala förpliktelser och personliga önskemål. Ytterligare ett resultat är att en hög tillfredställelse med resande, oavsett färdmedel bidrar till ett högre SWB. Bilanvändning bidrog i någon utsträckning till tillfredsställelse med resandet och därmed till högre välbefinnande. Denna roll skulle säkert framträda tydligare om minskat bilresande blev nödvändigt. Det har alltså betydelse för vårt subjektiva välbefinnande vilka vi är, var vi befinner oss i livet, var vi bor och hur vi reser. Men generellt sett är det viktigaste för välbefinnandet att vi är nöjda med våra aktiviteter och våra transporter. Undersökningen har tydligt påvisat att tillfredsställelse med resande är en resurs som underlättar vardagsaktiviteter och därmed ökar människors subjektiva välbefinnande. Därför skulle vidare forskning fokusera på vilka faktorer hos resor som ökar tillfredsställelsen med resande och samtidigt knyta detta till subjektivt välbefinnande

Roundtrip, Free-Floating and Peer-to-Peer Carsharing: A Bayesian Behavioral Analysis

This study analyses behavioral psychological facilitators and barriers to using different carsharing business models. It identifies the most preferable carsharing business models for different trip purposes as well as the main motivators for using it. Users of carsharing services (N=1,121) in German cities completed a questionnaire distributed by five operators representing three different business models: freefloating (FF), round-trip station-based (RTSB), and peer-to-peer (P2P). All analyses are performed from a Bayesian perspective and further discussion of the statistical analyses is included. The main results indicate that there are different preferences for carsharing business models depending on the trip purpose, with a trade-off between free-floating and round-trip station-based business models. The peer-to-peer business model stood out for short holiday trips. Age, educational level, and income affected the probability of selecting different carsharing operators. Users of FF and RTSB differ regarding driving habits and trust in the services