Walking on Sunshine or on the Highway to Hell? Predicting Willingness to Participate in an Online Intervention to Walk or Cycle more

Increasing walking and cycling is important both for population health and, if done through active transportation, for the local and global climate. In addition to infrastructural and regulatory measures, voluntary behavior change interventions are used to increase physical activity and active mobility. The impact of such interventions depends on their reach, both in total and whether they reach the groups that would benefit most. I collaborated with the Institute of Transport Economics and used data from a large survey used to recruit participants to different projects. I analyzed which sociodemographic characteristics and past behavior could predict intentions to walk and cycle more (N = 4195), willingness to participate in an intervention to do so (N = 2862), how (N = 1092) they wanted to participate (walking/cycling, leisure activity/active transportation) and what predicted completion of the intervention (N = 1092). Results show that usual travel mode can predict both intentions to walk and cycle more and willingness to participate. Car and motorcycle commuters had both lower intentions and less willingness to participate than active commuters and public transport users. This indicates that public transport commuters are the most promising group to reach with self-regulation interventions, while car and motorcycle commuters might need other approaches. Higher intentions to walk and cycle more were positively associated with willingness to participate in the intervention, as were being female and having more children under 18 in the household. People with children have been found to cycle less, but in this sample had higher intentions to cycle, were more likely to say yes to participating and more likely to choose cycling over walking. This indicates that people with children are promising groups to reach with interventions using self-regulatory strategies. The only variable significantly associated with completion of the intervention was physical activity, with inactive people being less likely to complete the intervention than moderately active people. This is consistent with previous findings and illustrates the difficulty related to reaching the groups that would benefit most from the intervention