Understanding changing travel behaviour over the life course: Contributions from biographical research

Chatterjee, Kiron; Scheiner, Joachim

Abstract

Life course approaches to travel behaviour, often labelled as mobility biographies, have emerged as a fruitful and promising research field over the past decade. They understand travel behaviour in the context of individual life courses and their phases of stability and change induced by life transitions and events, and they consider these individual processes to be embedded in personal networks and wider societal, economic and spatial processes. The paper first identifies motivations to pursue biographical research before introducing theoretical perspectives which can assist with biographical research of travel behaviour. It then summarises the contribution to date of travel behaviour studies which have adopted a biographical approach. This is presented in sections on life event effects on travel behaviour, the residential relocation and travel behaviour inter-relationship and the role of socialisation in travel behaviour. Research to date has shown that changes to travel behaviour are closely associated with life course events and with broader life development. Of particular interest for the future is to better understand what features of life course events are important in determining travel behaviour changes, to consider how life events themselves are influenced by travel preferences, to consider how different events interact to shape travel behaviour and to view and understand travel behaviour development over the life span.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 14th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research
• Start Date: Jul 19, 2015
• End Date: Jul 23, 2015
• Acceptance Date: Jul 1, 2015
• Publication Date: Jul 19, 2015
• Deposit Date: Feb 11, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 16, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: travel behaviour, life course, biographical, habit, life events, life transitions, turning points, mobility biographies, panel data, life history interviews
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/831129
• Publisher URL: http://www.iatbr2015.org.uk/index.php/iatbr/iatbr2015/paper/view/555
• Additional Information: Additional Information : A resource paper for the Workshop “Life-Oriented Approach for Transportation Studies” at the 14th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research; Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : 14th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research
• Contract Date: Feb 11, 2016