Rethinking habits and their role in behaviour change: the case of low-carbon mobility

Abstract

With the emergence of behaviour change on political and intellectual agendas in passenger transport, the question of how to understand and intervene in habitual carbon-intensive travel practices has become crucially important. Building primarily on the philosophies of Félix Ravaisson and John Dewey, we outline an approach to travel habits that is more affirmative than prevailing psychological perspectives. Rather than as the automatically cued, repetitive behaviour of individuals, habit is understood here as a generative and propulsive capacity brought about through repetition and belonging to body-mind-world assemblages that exceed the human individual as conventionally understood. The implications of the proposed conceptualisation of habits for behaviour change are also explored. We argue that widespread, durable behaviour change is unlikely to result from the displacement of automaticity by reasoned action alone but instead demands changes in collective customs.Additionally, a narrow focus on breaking carbon-intensive travel habits should be avoided.Not only should the formation of low-carbon habits and associated forms of embodied intelligence be stimulated; it is also important to capitalise on the potential for subtle change immanent to carbon-intensive travel habits in situations where individualised vehicular travel is the only realistic transport option.

Lift-share using mobile apps in tourism: The role of trust, sense of community and existing lift-share practices

“…The study is not seeking to attribute causation and the findings cannot be generalised. Schwanen et al (2012) have questioned studies of habit which show links between past and current behaviour. In this study, analysis focused on transference of transport practices in one setting to another, therefore an established habit would require modification and the transport resources are not directly comparable.…”

“…Gärling and Axhausen, 2003;Middleton, 2009;Murray and Doughty, 2016). Habit is interpreted in various ways from an automatically elicited behaviour based on repetition to an embodied intelligence that emerges from an interaction of the person with the environment and resources available (Schwanen et al, 2012). Based on the former, transport studies show a relationship between measures of past behaviour and current behaviour, however, Schwanen et al (2012) argue this may be because such studies essentially measure the same thing.…”

“…Habit is interpreted in various ways from an automatically elicited behaviour based on repetition to an embodied intelligence that emerges from an interaction of the person with the environment and resources available (Schwanen et al, 2012). Based on the former, transport studies show a relationship between measures of past behaviour and current behaviour, however, Schwanen et al (2012) argue this may be because such studies essentially measure the same thing. In Schwanen et al's (2012, p527) perspective, habit depends on "relatively stable body-mind-world assemblages" that is travel habit is less an individual decision and more a way we have come to perform particular ways of travelling in a given context.…”

“…At a theoretical level research has explored how societal structures have co-evolved with the car (Shove et al, 2012) and to a large extent tied people into car use which has become habitual (Schwanen et al, 2012). Given high car dependence and 'lock-in' (Randles and Mander, 2009) to this mode, it makes sense to explore desirable transport futures where cars can be used more efficiently.…”

Location choice with longitudinal WiFi data

“…Panel data are common in transportation research (Golob et al; and habits are often observed in travel behavior (Gärling and Axhausen;, in particular in route choice (Aarts and Dijksterhuis;2000;Bamberg et al;Thøgersen;2006;Eriksson et al;Verplanken et al;Gardner;2009;Schwanen et al; and in car ownership (Jong et al;2004). In Markov models of destination choices, transition matrix represents the probability of choosing a destination given the choice of destination at the previous stop.…”