Abstract
This paper explores people's willingness to reduce travel consumption in support of the transition to a low-carbon pathway beyond COVID-19, using new survey data from UK car drivers and air travellers. Evidence from our study indicates that reductions of 24% - 30% to car use and 20% - 26% to air travel could be sustained in the long term. This potentially could lead to annual reductions of 343–529 kgCO2 per car driver (20% - 29% of pre-COVID-19 car emissions) and 215–359 kgCO2 per air traveller (10% - 20% of pre-COVID-19 emissions from flying), suggesting that behavioural change may be a major route to emissions reductions. We find that stated voluntary reductions are greater among those who report having ‘more time to do creative things’ since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Hence, recovery policies promoting low-carbon leisure time may be a key to consumption reductions. We also find that higher-income travellers consume and pollute substantially more than the rest, and yet there is little difference in relative voluntary reductions across the income distribution. We conclude that behaviour associated with affluence represents a major barrier to a low-carbon transition, and that policies must address over-consumption associated with affluence as a priority.
Highlights
Over-consumption has been increasingly identified as a major cause of environmental degradation and a key barrier to carbon mitigation (Wiedmann et al, 2020; O’Neill et al, 2018; Røpke, 1999)
3 The scenarios set out in the CCC’s ‘Balanced Net Zero Pathway’ are as follows: (i) for passenger air travel, given that the baseline forecast anticipates an increase of 64% in 2050 compared with the 2018 level, a reduction of 39% in the ‘net zero’ scenario relative to the baseline forecast implies an actual 25% increase in air travel by 2050 compared with the 2018 level; (ii) for passenger car use, given that the baseline scenario anticipates an increase of 15% in 2050 on the Evidence from our study indicates that reductions of 20% - 26% to air travel and 24% - 30% to car driving could be sustained through behavioural changes
We find that voluntary reductions as a proportion of pre-COVID-19 distance travelled have increased between Waves 1 and 2, from 20% to 26% among air travellers, and from 24% to 30% among car drivers
Summary
Over-consumption has been increasingly identified as a major cause of environmental degradation and a key barrier to carbon mitigation (Wiedmann et al, 2020; O’Neill et al, 2018; Røpke, 1999). In 2020, the world experienced the coronavirus pandemic, which led to major disruptions in consumption worldwide and triggered a global economic downturn. This in turn led to unintended declines in carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants (Le Quéré et al 2020). A global pandemic that has caused more than five million deaths (John Hopkins University 2021) and debilitated the global economy should not be heralded as the means to securing emissions reductions, it does present a unique opportunity to initiate the much-needed behavioural shift towards reduced consumption over the long term (Forster et al, 2020)
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