Social clustering in high school transport choices

Abstract

Active transport offers opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts of car travel and improve health. During adolescence, friends and parents may influence transport mode to school. Using a social network survey of 934 high school students we investigated whether students' walking, cycling, bus and car travel to school were predicted by their friends' transport behaviour, accounting for parent encouragement, ride availability, distance to school, gender, school unit and age. In addition, we examined whether descriptive norms, friend encouragement or co-travel requests mediated the effect of friends' active transport behaviour. We found that friends' transport behaviour predicted ego behaviour, particularly for cycling. Descriptive norms and co-travel requests, but not friend encouragement, approached significance as mediators of friends' active transport similarities. Parent encouragement for active transport was a particularly strong predictor of transport mode. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.