Personal travel management: the adoption and consideration of travel‐related strategies

Abstract

Traveler behavior plays a role in the effectiveness of travel demand management (TDM) policies. Personal travel management is explored in this paper by analyzing individuals' adoption and consideration of 17 travel-related alternatives in relation to socio-demographic, mobility, travel-related attitude, personality and lifestyle preference variables. The sample comprises 1282 commuters living in urban and suburban neighborhoods of the San Francisco Bay Area. Among the findings: females were more likely to have adopted/considered the more 'costly' strategies; those with higher mobility were more likely to have adopted/considered travel-maintaining as well as travel-reducing strategies; and those who like travel and want to do more are less likely to consider travel-reducing strategies. These findings, when combined with those of earlier work on this subject, present a compelling argument for the need to further understand traveler behavior --particularly in response to congestion and TDM policies.

Behavioural effects of a tradable driving credit scheme: Results of an online stated adaptation experiment in the Netherlands

“…This finding is somewhat surprising as willingness to adapt car use in response to pricing measures is commonly found to decrease with income (Washbrook et al, 2006;Ubbels and Verhoef, 2005;Kockelman and Kalmanje, 2005;Rienstra et al, 1999). A possible explanation is that people in the lower-income group are more constrained in their choices with regard to activity scheduling (Clay and Mokhtarian, 2004).…”

How do individuals adapt their personal travel? Objective and subjective influences on the consideration of travel-related strategies for San Francisco Bay Area commuters

“…Second, although respondents were asked to indicate only strategies they were 'seriously' considering, they may not have felt constrained by the realities of whether they could afford such a strategy in their response. In their descriptive analysis of these strategies, Clay and Mokhtarian (2004) found that income was much more strongly related to adoption than to consideration. Finally, it may well be that the effects of income in some cases are being captured by other variables that are correlated with income (such as the former adoption of getting a better car and household auto ownership).…”

“…Finally, it should be kept in mind that, as stressed in previous related studies (Raney et al, 2000;Clay and Mokhtarian, 2004), there can be many reasons other than transportation motivations prompting the consideration of each strategy, although each strategy has transportation implications. It is even possible that the adoption or consideration of a strategy has nothing to do with transportation issues, especially for the high-cost strategies.…”

“…Previous studies (Cao and Mokhtarian, 2005;Clay and Mokhtarian, 2004) provided conceptual foundations for empirically investigating the consideration of 16 travelrelated adaptations, ranging from low-cost travel Transport Policy 12 (2005) maintaining/increasing strategies (such as getting a better car or changing work trip departure time), to medium-cost travel reducing strategies (such as changing mode or telecommuting), to higher-cost major location/lifestyle change strategies (such as residential relocation or retiring). This paper aims to develop behavioral models (specifically, binary logit models) for the consideration of each strategy and examine any patterns that emerge across models.…”

Engaging in Pro-Environment Travel Behaviour Research from a Psycho-Social Perspective: A Review of Behavioural Variables and Theories

“…A series of studies tried to investigate the role of personality traits: Mokhtarian, Salomon and Redmond [60] defined four typologies (adventure seekers, organizers, loners and calm people) thanks to a 17-item questionnaire and Cao and Mokhtarian [61,62] used an 18-item questionnaire that again individuated four lifestyles. Findings showed that adventure-seekers travel the most and are more flexible and that they tend to consider a wider set of strategies to reach their personal travel interests [63]. Anable [64] proposed five typologies-die-hard drivers, car complacent, malcontent motorists and aspiring environmentalists-which unite car dependence research with pro-environment concerns.…”