Living with fewer cars: review and challenges on household demotorization

ABSTRACT

Changing travel behaviour requires a precise understanding of the decision-making processes at work in households, in order to target public policies more effectively. The objective of this paper is to conduct a literature review to identify new research directions in the field of household demotorization, defined as the process of reducing car ownership at the individual household level. We identify three main contributions in the current literature, concerning firstly the quantification of household demotorization, secondly the influence of key events and travel socialisation on the decision to demotorize, and thirdly the role of certain transportation policies. The fourth, concluding section of the paper identifies policy implications and proposes new challenges for research in this field, which we believe deserves greater attention in the near future.

KEYWORDS:

• Demotorization
• car ownership
• key events
• travel socialisation
• public policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the French Agency for Research (ANR) through the project MoDe (Motives for Demotorization in French urban areas).