Mobility Styles and Car Ownership—Potentials for a Sustainable Urban Transport

Abstract

Decision-makers in cities worldwide have the responsibility to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in urban transport. Therefore, effective measures and policies that allow for a change in people’s mobility towards sustainable mobility must be derived. To understand how different people respond to measures and policies, and to increase the effectiveness of such policies, individual mobility needs and mobility determinants have to be considered. For this, the definition of individual mobility styles as holistic descriptions considering travel behavior, attitudes, as well as life stages is useful. This study presents a segmentation approach that identifies eight urban mobility styles by using data from a multidimensional survey conducted in Berlin and San Francisco. We applied a cluster analysis with both behavioral and attitudinal characteristics as segmentation criteria. By analyzing the characteristics, we identified a mobility style—the Environmentally Oriented Multimodals—that is environmentally oriented, but not yet all people in this cluster are sustainable in their mobility. Thus, they are the group with the highest potential to accept and use sustainable mobility. Additionally, we found that within the Environmentally Oriented Multimodals, the change from one life stage to another is also likely to be accompanied by a car acquisition.

Experiences of Polish Tourists Traveling for Leisure Purposes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Transport services are being widely analyzed, especially with regards to sustainable development. Magdolen et al [89] made a typology of mobility styles distinguishing an environment-oriented style, i.e., the one with the greatest potential for acceptance and use of sustainable mobility.…”

Trends, Enablers, and Barriers for Car Ownership

“…Changes in the automotive sector converge to a context that includes electric motors, autonomous driving systems, and custom vehicles ( 101 ). Thus, according to research ( 88 , 108 , 119 ), the direction is toward sustainable mobility, a movement that seeks to minimize pollution indices from the lesser use of cars.…”

“…Investments in technology for infrastructure and road safety and traffic management offer opportunities to overcome issues like traffic congestion, parking shortages, and lack of integration among transport modes ( 30 ). Thus, sustainable mobility can be the key to benefiting the development of urban planning aimed at reducing pollution and energy and fuel consumption, at the same time providing better life quality ( 108 ).…”

“…New business models must be adequate to servitization actions to have a technological and strategic apparatus aligned to the industrial context 4.0, however, without disregarding cultural aspects ( 44 ). The interactions and customization of the service should be more comprehensive and determined based on user interest and the level of service operation available ( 89 , 108 , 122 ).…”

Where Have Shared E-Scooters Taken Us So Far? A Review of Mobility Patterns, Usage Frequency, and Personas

“…For example, Eldeeb and Mohamed utilized a persona-based approach to understand the preferences of the key transit market groups and estimate their willingness to pay for service improvements [41]. In another study, Magdolen et al created eight mobility styles with behavioral and attitudinal characteristics as clustering criteria [42]. The difference between user types and personas is that, for the latter, we considered any user characteristics that could be found in the existing literature.…”