Why It Is not Easy to Change Mobility Behaviour in Winter Sports Traffic / Modifier les comportements de déplacements pour l'accès aux stations de ski : un défi de taille

Abstract

ve present study on mobility behaviour in winter sports is based on the premise that strategies to modify behaviour entail particularly high conversion costs in this segment of the transport market. Indeed both theoretical reflection and empirical research show that transport as a whole is an area of human behaviour in which adaptation costs are particularly high. In such a context, efforts to promote environmentally friendly behaviour are inevitably limited. As shown by a study of two winter sports destinations in the Bernese Oberland (Switze- ralnd), long-term mobility decisions leading to the ownership of an automobile or a rail pass greatly influence the choice of a means of transport to a sports destination. In addition to the observed domination of winter sports traffic by privately owned cars, there is an extremely high loyalty to the chosen means of transport that is not found in other transport segments, least of all in the routine circumstances of daily life. These empirical findings point to a high-cost situation which it will not be easy to change for as long as the car remains readily accessible to the average household. Analysis of the possibility of controlling winter sports traffic through the various transport actors reveals a clear "lock-in" situation, from which it is difficult for the actors to escape, whether on the supply side or on the demand side. We can therefore not expect any significant change in the extremely car- dependent behaviour of winter sport practitioners in the near future. The study does, however, point to long-term possibilities of changing this situation.