Exploring transition pathways of habitual transport behaviour

Private households account for more than half of the demand addressed to the transport sector. We propose an analytical framework to describe transitions in transport behaviour across cases and to identify their respective drivers. With this, we aim to better understand how patterns of transport behaviour form and to inform the development of policies to set transport behaviour onto a more sustainable pathway. People’s transport behaviour has been found to be best described as habitual behaviour. However, most policies to address the unsustainability of transport behaviour focus on isolated choice situations. They ignore the complexity that arises from the embeddedness of habitual behaviour in material and social realities, given by configurations of infrastructure, available technologies, skills, social norms, individual beliefs, and the necessity to coordinate the different activities of which everyday life consists. Our framework focuses on these interrelations. A first application of our framework illustrated its potential to inform policy design. We could show to which degree transport behaviour trapped in a phase of self-reproduction, and to which degree established habits regarding transport are already being questioned. Based on such insights, differentiated and case-based policies for a sustainability transition in transport behaviour in cities can be designed