Future mobility is an important theme of our work at DG Cities, not least for the impact of transport on decarbonisation efforts. For our next #nudgemonth blog, Economist, Leanne Kelly explores some of the conditions that can be conducive to positively changing travel behaviours – from timing and the opportunities around major life events, to the impact of social norms and trials. This aspect of behavioural science is central to our understanding of how people think and feel about travel, and thus how well any solution can meet their needs and perform.

Here at DG Cities, we recognise that the successful planning of future mobility is central to the way a place will function. Mobility matters for decarbonisation, of course, but also for a breadth of socio-economic activities, neighbourhood resilience and vibrancy, and for individual choice and experience. Therefore, we are committed to understanding and incorporating the behavioural dimension – people’s attitudes and feelings about new solutions, their barriers to uptake, and individual-level outcomes, including wellbeing. These are some of the key behavioural principles that we try to keep in mind when it comes to travel and innovations in mobility:

• The role of testing and trialling

• Attitudes and norms are a key part of travel behaviour

• Different outcomes matter to people, at different times – not just journey time

• Travel matters for wellbeing.

Test, trial – and repeat

We believe it is critical to ensure that the widest groups of potential users and non-users are engaged in testing and trialling at every stage, from generating ideas to their design and delivery. Our D-Risk project for self-driving vehicles, for example, found great value in engaging diverse groups in deliberative workshops and surveys. Asking people about their thoughts and feelings – How do you feel about road safety? Which features would you like to see in a self-driving car? Who are autonomous vehicles for, and who should they be for? Who would you trust to operate in the industry? – prompted interesting discussions, which we followed up with ongoing attitude ‘temperature checks’ and produced a bank of ‘edge cases.’

Giving people opportunities to test new technology can stimulate access in a broad sense: by ensuring solutions have been developed with a range of people in mind, that early understanding of how solutions work and could work is distributed more widely. Trialling (and trialling again) matters, as travel, especially regular commuting behaviour, is well-recognised as being habitual and ‘sticky’. Indeed, people are typically more likely to change this behaviour around major life events – moving home, job or family changes.

Research also demonstrates the role of:

• Attitudes

  Pro-environmental attitudes make switches away from car commuting, for example, significantly more likely. Attitudes precede behaviour change and travel perceptions are an important early step in long-term change – though importantly, intentions alone are not enough.

• Norms

  Social norms, that the behaviour is seen from and acceptable to a relevant social group – and personal norms, where an individual sees the behaviour as familiar to them and self-expected in particular situations – matter. The premise is that testing, say, an electric vehicle or a cycle route for oneself and seeing others also test and use it (has your neighbour now gone electric?) will enhance take-up of new solutions. Norms will also have a critical role in shifting attitudes towards mobility as a service and away from ownership models.

• Self-efficacy

  It’s important that we feel we have behavioural control and can make changes to meet our goals, so having a chance to test and trial in a relevant environment is important, beyond hypotheticals.

There have been some excellent trials promoting sustainable travel in new residential developments, from EV car clubs to walking and cycle promotion, reflecting the role of life changes and nudges to create new habits within a conducive spatial context. Some key lessons here are that community-level norms can work well, with concentrated local action being very apparent and social, and that commitments can be supported where a sense of community is evoked and brought into the trial and individual feedback.

The route from attitudes to intentions to behaviour

There are various examples across the sector where testing, attitudes and understanding (or lack of) have mattered, such as cycling uptake and continuation across different groups, the operation of smart motorways, and pedestrianised or low traffic streets. A further, simple mnemonic is that a proposed new option be made per the Behavioural Insights Team’s EAST framework: Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely.

An interesting nuance to the attitudes-behaviour route is that an individual’s different objectives may have quite different impacts when it comes to the actual decisions they make about travel. Timing matters. Sustainable travel demand should increase as more of the public seek improved environmental outcomes. However, this objective can become lost in the travel moment, as a fast or familiar journey is more urgent, tangible and personal. Making the outcomes and objective contributions of travel more salient may be part of informed travel decision-making solutions. Technology can have a role to play – there are examples with sustainable and active travel apps with varied goal-framing (health, environmental, cost savings), and lotteries – people are incentivised to cycle to not miss being in the (small reward) lottery draw. Or sometimes, increasing their shared steps is incentive enough.

But with such examples, supporting harder to reach groups in making the changes that they would like to make, and ensuring changes are maintained beyond the first, novel incentives, is important and challenging… 

Making it easy

Personal behaviour change planning can be helpful. Learning shows that setting short and long-term objectives with people can work well with appropriate messaging, reminders and goal feedback. People may ultimately be supported in choosing, say, the fastest journey now, but the greenest later in the day, such that neither becomes the default and that each trip is understood to be potentially different – by time, weather, co-passenger, mood, and so on. Travel and its planning can be effortful. That’s why ‘making it easy’ is key, where travel defaults and habits only become stronger at the start of a busy day or end of a long day.

Beyond the infrastructure and market delivery, the routes to sustainable and beneficial travel behaviours are of real interest to our work at DG Cities. How people think and feel about travel and different options matters, in terms of how solutions meet needs and will perform. This has been a real focus of some of the projects our team have undertaken in the last two years, such as our EV consumer survey, micro-mobility consumer research and D-Risk programme.

 Travel matters for wellbeing

There is a great bank of research exploring the wellbeing of travel, particularly commuting, which has been described as a stress factor and often an unpleasant part of daily life. It is longitudinal studies that are of real insight here, as they show where there are associations with worse mental health for people with longer commutes, or commutes by certain modes, over periods of time, and associations to lower job and time satisfaction measures, as part of overall life satisfaction.

Travel trips have different interactions with elements of wellbeing – some require more concentration, or are noisier, more or less reliable, or allow for other activities or thinking time, and offer different levels of meaningful choice. There are also the health benefits of active travel. The design of future mobility solutions should learn from the elements and their combinations that most impact people’s different journey experiences – and there are a range of valuable techniques to use here.

The impact of Covid-19 on travel behaviour

Returning to the test and trial principle, the Covid-19 pandemic experience for travel meant that many people were involuntarily or voluntarily adapting and using transport differently. There are important questions here for how the nature of travel has changed in the long-term, and what this means for individuals, subjective wellbeing and urban planning. Our team is interested in the ongoing travel data, and the limited level of modal changes that were made in comparison to travel frequency changes. The wellbeing evidence is emerging and can provide insights from a larger, more varied population that has commuted less – or continues to do so. Whilst some people may now have the autonomy to change their work travel to support their wellbeing, others do not. This has important implications for benefit distribution, and supports the case for considering wellbeing in transport design and investment cases.

Going forward, our team is committed to keeping the role of behavioural insights central: asking people what they think and feel about transport, and if they’d like to test it. We are excited to consider mobility behaviours and how these interact with ensuring places are resilient and full of life. Get in touch if you would like to find out more about this area of our work.