The impact of COVID-19 related regulations and restrictions on mobility and potential for sustained climate mitigation across the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK

Human behaviour change is necessary to meet targets set by the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change. Restrictions and regulations put in place globally to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during 2020 have had a substantial impact on everyday life, including many carbon-intensive behaviours such as transportation. Changes to transportation behaviour may reduce carbon emissions. Behaviour change theory can offer perspective on the drivers and influences of behaviour and shape recommendations for how policy-makers can capitalise on any observed behaviour changes that may mitigate climate change. For this commentary, we aimed to describe changes in data relating to transportation behaviours concerning working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic across the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. We display these identified changes in a concept map, suggesting links between the changes in behaviour and levels of carbon emissions. We consider these changes in relation to a comprehensive and easy to understand model of behaviour, the Opportunity, Motivation Behaviour (COM-B) model, to understand the capabilities, opportunities and behaviours related to the observed behaviour changes and potential policy to mitigate climate change. There is now an opportunity for policy-makers to increase the likelihood of maintaining pro-environmental behaviour changes by providing opportunities, improving capabilities and maintaining motivation for these behaviours

Moving a taxi sector to become electric

The increased adoption of electric vehicles worldwide is largely caused by the uptake of private electric cars. In parallel other segments such as busses, city logistics and taxis, are increasingly becoming electrified. Amsterdam is an interesting case, as the municipality and the taxi sector have signed a voluntary agreement to realise a full electric taxi fleet by 2025. This paper investigates the results of a survey that was distributed amongst 3000 taxi drivers to examine perceptions and attitudes on the municipal charging incentives as well as taxi ride characteristics

Moving a taxi sector to become electric: An innovative incentive programme in Amsterdam

The increased adoption of electric vehicles worldwide is largely caused by the uptake of private electric cars. In parallel other segments such as busses, city logistics and taxis, are increasingly becoming electrified. Amsterdam is an interesting case, as the municipality and the taxi sector have signed a voluntary agreement to realise a full electric taxi fleet by 2025. This paper investigates the results of a survey that was distributed amongst 3000 taxi drivers to examine perceptions and attitudes on the municipal charging incentives as well as taxi ride characteristics

Moving a Taxi Sector to Become Electric: Characterizing Taxi Drivers Interested in Purchasing a Full Electric Vehicle

Electrification of mobility exceeds personal transport to increasingly focus on particular segments such as city logistics and taxis. These commercial mobility segments have different motives to purchase a full electric vehicle and require a particular approach to incentivize and facilitate the transition towards electric mobility. A case where a municipality was successful in stimulating the transition to electric mobility is the taxi sector in the city of Amsterdam. Using results from a survey study (n = 300), this paper analyses the differences in characteristics between taxi drivers that either have or do not have interest in purchasing a full electric taxi vehicle. Results show a low intention across the sample to adopt a full electric vehicle and no statistically significant differences in demographics between the two groups. Differences were found between the level of acceptability of the covenant, the rated attractiveness of the incentives, the ratings of full electric vehicle attributes and the consultation of objective and social information sources. These results can be used by policy makers to develop new incentives that target specific topics currently influencing the interest in a full electric taxi vehicle