Abstract
Policy-makers have recognized that changing travel behavior is important. People, however, do not change their behavior so readily, particularly the use of the car. A central concept that has been invoked to account for this has been the concept of habit. However, various studies also present people as having concrete reasons for driving: Their choices are intentional. This interdisciplinary study attempts to reconcile these two understandings of travel behavior by drawing on insights from the philosopher Anscombe and a growing body of travel research termed the mobility biography literature. It applies some of Anscombe’s insights from Intention to the act of driving. With regard to the mobility biography literature, it draws out conceptual implications both from theoretical and empirical aspects: In particular, the characterization of travel decisions as nested in a hierarchy of life decisions and the association of life events with changes in travel decisions. It concludes that a broader conceptualization of human behavior leads to a broader view as to what policy-makers can do. It reminds us that transport is ‘special’, that transport and policy are inextricable, and that the importance of infrastructure provision should not be ignored.
Highlights
Transportation makes up a significant share of total energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions, and is dominated by the use of the private motor car [1]
The concept of interdisciplinarity has been difficult to define in an easy and straightforward way [7], and in the case of this study it cannot be defined and merely as using two or more disciplines in a common intellectual endeavor. This is because the mobility biography literature cannot be strictly described as fitting into a discipline as such: More appropriate seems the broader notion of a field of research—or, as used elsewhere, a research ‘approach’ [8]
This paper posed the research question: Is car travel behavior, as a subset of wider travel behavior and of human behavior in general, intentional, habitual, or both? To answer this question, it used an interdisciplinary approach to examine the concepts of intention and habit as have been deployed in transportation research, drawing on the philosophy of Anscombe in Intention and the mobility biography literature
Summary
Transportation makes up a significant share of total energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions, and is dominated by the use of the private motor car [1]. Related to this is the notion of ‘car-dependence’: Once a society has been configured for the convenience of private motorists, conducting one’s life without using a car becomes more or less impracticable; one comes to ‘depend’ on a car [2] What these concepts have in common is that they explain resistance to change (or inertia) by primary reference to the external environment a person might find themselves situated in: That within which they might try to meet their needs. The concept of interdisciplinarity has been difficult to define in an easy and straightforward way [7], and in the case of this study it cannot be defined and merely as using two or more disciplines in a common intellectual endeavor This is because the mobility biography literature cannot be strictly described as fitting into a discipline as such: More appropriate seems the broader notion of a field of research—or, as used elsewhere, a research ‘approach’ [8].
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