Investigating pro-environmental and active travel behaviour for successful sustainable travel promotion

The promotion of sustainable transport is usually targeted at transportation system users in urban areas. However, the end result of any such initiative depends largely on the recipients. Investigating people's behaviour and identifying user profiles to reveal the degree of their environmental awareness and sensitivity, as well as their attitudes towards active travelling, could shed light on the critical aspects of behaviour relevant to everyday mobility practices. This information could be used to enhance appropriate sustainable policies that presently seem to be inadequate. This paper is concerned with recent research work which was part of a large-scale survey in the city of Thessaloniki, in Northern Greece. The survey was undertaken in the context of the implementation of a new Intelligent Transport System-ITS platform providing traveller information and enabling the selection of alternative greener routes. The work focuses on analysing possible user typologies to allow a more targeted approach and the development of properly tailored interventions for sustainable travel promotion. From a sample of 4,815 respondents to a large scale survey of user needs, this research focused upon those who were car drivers, 3,132 in total. Following cluster analysis, a traveller typology indicated differing degrees of environmental sensitivity and active mobility. This provided information enabling appropriate interventions and policy-related actions. It allowed differentiation between several intervention audiences, the devising of appropriate incentives, and strengthening the potential of sustainable travel policies. The fmdings from this work, on which the initial recommendations such as integrated approaches, combining methodologies and the relevance of local context to intervention design are based, could be extended and elaborated through further research. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of the Programme Committee of the Transport Research Arena 2012