According to a recent study of residents in the U.K., the way people choose to commute is linked to how long they’ve lived in their home, with newer homeowners being less likely to commute by car. Here are the details from Laura Bliss of CityLab.
Whether you drive, bike, walk, or take the train, the way you get to work each day is more of an automatic response than it is a conscious choice. So long as other patterns in your life are constant, there’s no signal telling you to ditch your car in favor of the bus – even if you know it’s the cheaper, more environmentally friendly thing to do.
To trigger changes in commute habits, studies have shown, a shift in context is key. For example, workers are particularly open to changing up commute habits when their offices relocate – and they’ll stick with them, if their companies hit them up with the right incentives at the right moment.
Now, research published in PLOS ONE in late April by Cardiff University researchers provides new evidence that changing residences can encourage a change in travel norms. But to make those new habits last, commuters may still need an extra push from policymakers.
Using data from a multi-year survey by the Economic and Social Research Council on the daily lives of nearly 20,000 U.K. residents, the researchers measured how long it had been since residents had moved homes, their normal mode of travel to work, and the relative strength of their environmental attitudes. The researchers hypothesized that eco-minded folks would be more likely to choose environmentally friendly modes, such as trains and bikes, over cars.
The results were these: The length of time that a person had lived at his or her current address was indeed linked to their commute mode – independent of age, gender, income, and geographic location. Specifically, a person’s chances of commuting by car were lowest immediately after moving to a different residence. Those chances sharply increased over the first two years in the new home, then rose slowly and gradually thereafter. Eco-mindedness was indeed a predictor of lower car usage after a change in address. But, just as with everyone else, that link faded over time.
That means that there may be a window of opportunity for policymakers who want to encourage the use of transit.
