Identification of determinants for rescheduling travel mode choice and transportation policies to reduce car use in urban areas

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a qualitative analysis about the determinants related to rescheduling travel mode decisions during the activity scheduling process. Notably, we were interested to study changes between intention and behavior. Data used came from an in-depth Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) follow up survey to habitual drivers carried out during the implementation of a panel survey. An interpretative qualitative method based on Analytic Induction was used to cope with the complex nature of rescheduling decisions and the characteristics of the data. The Theory of Planned Behavior has been used to gain a better understanding of the reasons associated with rescheduling travel mode decisions and to obtain a possible explanation of the phenomena studied. In our sample, 12 codes were identified as the main determinants of travel mode changing. Main reasons for rescheduling a travel mode are different considering gender, age, and the type of travel mode change. Main reasons for changing a nonprivate preplanned travel mode to a private travel mode are different considering the type of travel mode preplanned. New determinants of rescheduling decisions different from those associated with other activity scheduling decisions previously identified emerge when analyzing travel mode changes. A number of important sustainable transportation policies to reduce car use in urban areas are derived from the results of this study.

KEYWORDS:

• Activity scheduling process
• qualitative analysis
• sustainable transportation
• travel mode rescheduling

Acknowledgments

The data used in this study was collected within the framework of MARYPOSA project founded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (E29/08).

Funding

This research is partially funded by MINERVA project founded by the I+D+i National Program of Society Challenges of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (TRA2015-71184-C2-1-R).