1 How single events change travel mode choice – a life span perspective

This paper reports the results of an explorative study with 91 German participants which was conducted in late 2003 as online-research with people between 19 and 62 years of age. Aim of the study was to test which events in life influence travel mode choice, how they influence it and if the psychology of predicting travel behaviour should focus more on those shifts in people’s lives to explain changing preferred travel modes. The study identifies the most important events in the lives of the participating people from a retrospective perspective. Some very important events among others were acquiring a driver’s licence, changing school, starting at the university, moving to a new town, starting or losing a job. Furthermore, it is shown that the participants ’ car choice habits are weaker when they experienced travel mode related life events in the year prior to the study. Finally, three clusters of participants were identified which show different patterns of behaviour in their retrospective description of travel mode choice. This different behaviour is related to different sets of life events