The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rapid change in travel behavior for different types of trips, including everyday social and recreational leisure trips. People have used adaptive travel behaviors to cope with the new circumstances for activities and transport. Due to the Swedish strategy focusing on more voluntary restrictions, people have had reason to consider which trips and activities to skip and which to keep. The overall aim of the study is to explore and deepen the knowledge about adaptive behaviors used and seek to understand its possible implications for future travel behavior change towards sustainable mobility through the use of qualitative interviews focusing on everyday leisure trips. The results illustrate how people have used a range of adaptive behaviors to cope with the implications of the pandemic, with cancellation and change of transport mode being the ones most reflected upon by the interviewees. Further, the results reveal how the overall label “everyday leisure trips” in fact includes a variety of trip purposes that differ in terms of flexibility and importance and must thus be approached in different ways in transport policy measures.

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In search for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, insights into the characteristics of all sorts of trips and specifically trips by car are needed. This paper focuses on everyday leisure trips for social and recreational purposes. Travel behaviour for these purposes is analysed considering individual and household factors as well as properties of the trip, based on Swedish national travel survey data. The analysis reveals that everyday leisure trips are often of joint character and that the average distance travelled per person and day increases with, for example, income, cohabitation, children in the household and residence in rural areas. The result also shows that the studied characteristics vary between studied trip purposes, influencing the sustainability potential of a reduction in car use and suggested measures. For instance, the largest share of passenger mileage comes from social trips, whereas trips for exercise and outdoor life have the largest share of car trips below 5 km. Several characteristics indicate difficulties in transferring trips by car to, for example, bicycle or public transport due to convenience, economy, start times, company etc. The study indicates that there is a need to take a broader view of the effective potential.

In search for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, insights into the characteristics of all sorts of trips and specifically trips by car are needed. This paper focuses on everyday leisure trips for social and recreational purposes. Travel behaviour for these purposes is analysed considering individual and household factors as well as properties of the trip, based on Swedish national travel survey data. The analysis reveals that everyday leisure trips are often of joint character and that the average distance travelled per person and day increases with, for example, income, cohabitation, children in the household and residence in rural areas. The result also shows that the studied characteristics vary between studied trip purposes, influencing the sustainability potential of a reduction in car use and suggested measures. For instance, the largest share of passenger mileage comes from social trips, whereas trips for exercise and outdoor life have the largest share of car trips below 5 km. Several characteristics indicate difficulties in transferring trips by car to, for example, bicycle or public transport due to convenience, economy, start times, company etc. The study indicates that there is a need to take a broader view of the effective potential.

No abstract