SUMMARY - The Irrationality of Transport Behaviours
When it comes to transport usage, we are far from being rational agents or ‘Homo transporticus’ as Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland call it in their recent book [1]. Instead, as Garcia-Sierra et al. explain in a brilliant article, our preferences are heterogeneous, inconsistent and largely influenced by our cognitive biases and mental heuristics. These can be defined as ‘systematic and flawed patterns of responses to judgement and decision problems’. They affect both our short-term and long-term mobility choices, but surprisingly, are rarely considered by transport planners. Behavioural science can help understand them better to ultimately promote more sustainable mobility behaviours.
Short-term and long-term mobility decisions
Short-term mobility decisions include timings, destination, the choice of routes and travel modes. Yet, mobility decisions are more than just choosing the right train, or deciding to drive to work on any given day. In their article, Garcia-Sierra et al. explain that our life events are in themselves long-term mobility choices. Buying a car, choosing a place to live and to work, obtaining a driving licence all have a lasting impact on our travel behaviours. And both these short-term and long-term decisions are influenced by cognitive biases that lead us to favour the car over public transport usage.
(Garcia-Sierra et al., 2015)
Drive my car
One of the most striking findings from behavioural science regarding mobility behaviours is the ‘car-effect’, a systematic bias towards car usage. Concretely, it refers to a marked preference for driving, even when it is riskier, more expensive, and less reliable than other options.
This preference is the result of affective rather than rational factors. Car usage is indeed associated with a set of positive feelings, ranging from freedom to power. A car is a symbol of status, reputation and can serve as a way to boost one’s self-esteem. This is fuelled by ads that sell cars as signals of social position and wealth. Think about a typical car commercial. As Thierry Libaert mentioned, you’ll likely picture “a man, senior executive (power), more likely to be in his forties and driving alone”, often in a wide outdoor space (freedom).
These emotional and reputational aspects all influence our choice of car. But there’s a silver lining in the fact that these motivations can also serve the environmental cause. Studies indeed showed that the sales of the Toyota Prius, a hybrid and environmentally-friendly car, were primarily motivated by…status reasons! As buyers put it: ‘it shows people that I care’. As odd as this reaction might be, it illustrates two well-studied behavioural insights:
The ‘Warm Glow Giving’ theory, which refers to the sense of joy and satisfaction that people get from doing their part to help others.
And ‘Conspicuous Generosity’ or our desire to appear generous in front of others.
The success of the Toyota Prius was therefore explained by its particularly distinguishable design, which made it the perfect (and highly visible) symbol of both altruism and sustainability.
Car: 1 — Public transport: 0
The fight ‘car versus public transport’ is not exactly a fair one. Unlike driving, the use of public transport is far from eliciting positive feelings and emotions. Quite the contrary actually. While cognitive biases favour car usage in terms of price, convenience and reliability, they negatively affect our perceptions of public transport. For instance, research has found that car drivers can exaggerate time travel by public transport by up to 46%.
And why is that? Schedules showing the potential waiting time or trip duration encourage people to constantly compare the actual and the scheduled waiting and journey time. Any failure is interpreted as a lack of reliability and time loss, even if the delay is minimal (studies found that we value 0 to 5-minute time gains, more than we value 20 to 25-minute gains). But we dislike uncertainty and variability more than we dislike long travel times. This could explain why we prefer car usage over public transport, as driving gives us a perception of control over time.
The cherry on top of the cake? Our availability heuristic leads us to remember salient – and thus generally bad – events more than we remember good ones. Hence why a late bus or tram is likely to disproportionately affect your perceptions of public transport in general.
Stuck in habits
Mobility preferences become a real issue when they get us stuck into habitual patterns. As Garcia-Sierra et al. state, the self-selection bias leads us to choose the location of our home based on our anticipated travel preferences. If we are inclined to drive, we’ll choose car-oriented environments. This decision will in itself affect our future mobility behaviours.
Repeating trips in a consistent context will then turn these behaviours into habits. Research has found that people who commute, tend to leave at the same time and use the same route every day. And once we get in this habitual mode, we tend to adopt a tunnel vision that makes us insensitive to new information. Our capacity for cognitive deliberation lowers as we travel automatically.
In addition, habits are stronger than intentions and moral obligations, meaning that they can reduce the self-control we have over specific behaviours. Hence why mobility habits are particularly difficult to change.
So, what do we do now?
The good news is that behavioural science can provide useful tools to transport planners, policymakers and marketers who wish to encourage sustainable mobility behaviours.
We know for instance that social influence, be it our family culture or the behaviours of our peers, has an important impact on modal choice. Informing about the proportion of people who don’t drive could make the use of alternative transport the new norm. Once internalised this social norm could become a personal norm, and increase our feelings of responsibility. Driving is a social dilemma that creates a conflict between our personal immediate benefits and the long-term interests of society. Seeing others travel differently can encourage us to reciprocate and cooperate to help reduce our global emissions.
Studies also found that adolescents’ attitudes towards driving are learned from their parents and peers, who act as role models. A shift in family culture from driving to the use of public transport could encourage the implementation of sustainable mobility behaviours among younger generations.
Finally, the narrative around driving could elicit different types of feelings. Guilt and disappointment, coming from peers, could for instance lead to more intentions to use public transport in the long-term, especially if social norms continue to evolve.
Although they cannot discourage the use of cars, advertisers could play their part by promoting sustainable practices, such as carpooling, and by ensuring that eco-friendly vehicles appeal to affective motivations.
Garcia-Sierra, M., van den Bergh, J. C. J. M., & Miralles, C. (2015). Behavioural economics, travel behaviour and environmental-transport policy. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 41(December), 288-305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2015.09.023
[1] Transport for Humans, Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland: https://londonpublishingpartnership.co.uk/transport-for-humans