Shifting to more sustainable mobility styles: A latent transition approach

Cities around the world make efforts to reduce car use and its negative consequences but even in cycling cities, mobility behaviour is still dominated by car use. This paper examines the effect of life events, changed resources and attitude-behaviour incongruency on changes in people's mobility style. The paper is based on a longitudinal survey including people who participated 2–3 times within a 2.5-year period. Applying latent transition analysis based on participants' mobility attitudes and behaviour, we identified 5 distinct mobility classes: one functional and one enthusiastic car user class; one car-prone and one car-aversive cycling class and a public transport class. Free-floating car sharing subscription had an effect on initial class membership but not on transition probability. However, shifts were significantly related to age and gender, changes in income and place of residence. Yet, most effects disappeared when car ownership was included in the latent transition model. Once people end up in car-centred mobility styles, a voluntary transition back seems difficult to achieve.