Abstract
This paper presents a mixed-method analysis of car ownership in Reykjavik, Iceland, a location with a high motorization level and deeply rooted car culture. We utilize qualitative interviews to understand vehicle possession reasons and elaborate the study with statistical analysis using a softGIS survey dataset with characteristics of the respondents and their residential location. We focus on adults aged 25 to 40, who are suggested to be less car-oriented than older generations. We also describe the historic development of Reykjavik’s car culture to give a perspective for the findings. We show that even among the studied age group, car ownership is still seen as a social norm, with few even seeing it possible to live without a car, and the public transport system is seen as giving a poverty stigma. However, we still find an increasing share of car-free households towards the city center. Still, the built environment impact is limited to the city center, which has a higher proportion of small adult-only households residing in shared apartments than other areas. Moreover, there seems to be a three-fold connection between having a child, acquiring a car (if not already possessed), and choosing a suburban residential location. Some indications of residential self-selection related to car ownership were found, but pro-car attitudes and residential location independently influenced car ownership. This study helps to understand the reasons for high car dominance and supports designing policies to reduce car-dependency, not just in Reykjavik but also elsewhere.
Highlights
Accepted: 4 January 2021Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from private vehicles has become a critical global climate change mitigation target [1]
We investigate car ownership in the Capital Region (Reykjavik) of Iceland, a strongly car-oriented location with car ownership nested in the culture, and with extremely high ground transport emissions in global terms [45], but with an ongoing transitoriented development (TOD) plan [46]
The qualitative analysis led to the emergence of societal level potential explanations to the current very high car ownership level, personal issues, and urban structure related aspects
Summary
Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from private vehicles has become a critical global climate change mitigation target [1]. Following Ewing et al [2], this can be achieved in three ways: (1) by improving vehicle fuel economy, (2) by reducing the GHG content of fuels, and (3) by reducing vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT). The first two can be labeled as “sustainable mobility”, and the third as “sustainable urbanism” [3] and be divided further into two: reducing VKT while possessing vehicles and lowering vehicle possession rates. It has been claimed that due to the high production-phase emissions, just reducing VKT is not enough, but that car ownership must go down as well [4]. We focus on the “sustainable urbanism” option, and on the component of car ownership. We look at the issue both from the perspective of the urban structure impact as well as societal and personal reasons to possess vehicles
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