Determinants of low-carbon transport mode adoption: systematic review of reviews

Abstract

Urban transport provides access to multiple services, structures and impedes daily life of residents, and translates into wellbeing considerations, sustainability impacts, and GHG emissions. Thus motivated, multiple disciplines, ranging from psychology to urban planning, are invested in understanding the potential for transitioning to low-carbon and sustainable urban transport systems. While each discipline has carved out a growing body of knowledge, a consistent cross-disciplinary understanding of psychological, sociological, and urban form determinants of urban mobility choices is, perhaps surprisingly so, still lacking. Here, we systematically review the reviews of several strands of literature and lay out the evidence for individual, social, and infrastructure level factors pertinent to urban mode choice. Synthesizing the results from 75 review papers, we find that all three dimensions (individual, social, and infrastructure) unambiguously interfere with mode choice. Individuals are most motivated to shift modes, if they are well informed, if personal norms match low-carbon mode use, and, most importantly, if they perceive to have personal control over decisions. Perceptions about common travel behaviour (descriptive social norms), especially if supported by perceived normative beliefs of others (injunctive norms), are highly influential to support mode shift. However, the overall margin of shift as induced by individual and social settings remains limited. Instead, the infrastructure factors explain large differences in mode choice. New shared mobility modes, and teleworking and shopping, add a long tail to modes chosen, but are no game changer. We conclude that a transition to low-carbon mobility requires low-carbon infrastructure, which leverages enthusiastic individuals’ concerns and empowers them for mode change, and that address safety concerns prevalent especially in cities of the Global South. The mode shift to low-carbon option can then be sustained and enhanced by social influence in the form of collective social norms.

Assessing the value orientation impact on the city dwellers’ perception of the ecological situation

“…Moreover, researchers say that programs involving residents in implementing such programs will form and develop the residents' environmental behavior (MITRAN, 2019;JAVAID, 2020). Therefore, we can conclude that understanding the city dwellers' attitude to environmental problems will make it possible to elaborate programs that will be easier for citizens to accept, easier to implement, and form new eco-friendly patterns of behavior, change their habits, developing an ecological culture in the population.…”

Conceptualizing the Role of Individual Agency in Mobility Transitions: Avenues for the Integration of Sociological and Psychological Perspectives

“…These studies draw on different approaches such as the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) describing mode choice mainly as an intentional decision process or conceive mode choice as a habitual behavior, to name only some of the prominent conceptualizations (Hunecke, 2015;Chng et al, 2018). The literature on mode choice will not be described here in further detail (see, e.g., Chng et al, 2018or Javaid et al, 2020 for an overview), but it is important to note that some critique commonly used behavioral models of not sufficiently mirroring the context in which the individual action is embedded (Shove, 2010). However, in line with Bögel et al (2019), we argue that there are social-psychological approaches explicitly addressing the influence of social and structural factors and thereby acknowledging the complexity of individual behavior.…”

Strategies for a Circular Economy in the Construction and Demolition Sector: Identifying the Factors Affecting the Recommendation of Recycled Concrete

“…Social networks are seen as affecting intentions by means of descriptive social influence (what others do), [72][73][74] and the relative influence that the behaviour of others has on the agent. In Giddens' words, "the reflexive monitoring of activity is a chronic feature of everyday action and involves the conduct not just of the individual but also of others" [53].…”