Company incentives and individual preferences towards sustainable travel alternatives

Abstract

Since the acceptance of changing travel habits is a matterof subjective preferences and individual values, the questionof how to make individuals voluntarily choose new travelalternatives is not straightforward. In this study we focus onan office district called Nacka Strand outside Stockholm, wherecompanies tried to implement new and more efficientalternatives to personal travel. The aim is to reduce bothemissions and costs from personal travel, in parallel with anincreased utility among the employees. The idea is that theemployees shall be encouraged, not enforced to change travelpatterns. We start out from the research question of what factorsaffect individual preferences due to various incentives in thechoice between present and new alternatives. From thisperspective we derive secondary environmental and monetarygains possible to obtain. Examples of such incentives would bee.g. attractive IT-conveniences or monetary bonuses stimulatingthe use of the more efficient alternatives. To analyticallyanalyse the impact from incentives on individual behaviour weuse the toolbox of micro econometric modelling, in which theaim is to test the employees\u92criteria for changingbehaviour, as dependent on certain explicit conditions. Themodels provide information of ways to reach environmental andeconomical goals without deteriorating the employees\u92working conditions