Social acceptance factors of mobility-related policy packages

The transport sector, including motorized individual transport, contributes 22 % to Germany’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is struggling to reduce them. Therefore, it is crucial to design and implement policies that shift people’s mobility behavior toward climate neutrality. Incentives are generally well-accepted but have limited potential to bring about long-term behavioral change. Restrictive measures are more effective at reducing GHG emissions but tend to be less well-accepted. Research has therefore suggested combining incentives and restrictive measures in policy packages. In this study, we compiled three different policy packages (one including only incentives, one including only restrictive measures, and one combining incentives and restrictive measures) and tested the (in)direct effects of policy package properties, political and ideological views, structural and socio-demographic variables, as well as “automobility engagement” (AE) facets on policy package acceptance using single-indicator latent variable (SILVA) models. In addition, we tested whether acceptance of the package consisting of incentives and restrictive measures could be increased by adding a social norm message (fourth group). We surveyed 2,275 German residents between November 2023 and January 2024. Our results showed that the patterns of significant predictors differ between the four groups. Policy appraisal was the most important predictor for the acceptance of the incentive, restrictive and combined packages, while environmental concern was key for the acceptance of the combined package including the framing message. Contrary to our hypothesis, the social norm framing message did not influence acceptance of the combined package. We discuss these findings with a view to designing and communicating policy packages including both incentives and restrictive measures to accelerate a just transition in the field of mobility.