Why Americans Don't Drive Less When Gas Prices Soar (Dr. Ian Walker)
Jul 12, 2022
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Dr. Ian Walker, an environmental psychology expert, discusses the challenges of incentivizing alternative modes of transportation and breaking ingrained travel habits. He explores the ineffectiveness of disincentives and shares strategies for behavior change, such as disruptive events and workplace commute incentives. The chapter emphasizes the need to understand the emotional and irrational factors influencing travel choices and urges listeners to drive less.
Changing deeply ingrained travel habits requires long-term support and repetition, not just incentives and disincentives.
Creating environments that make active transportation and public transit more accessible and desirable can lead to sustainable travel choices.
Deep dives
The Power of Habits in Shaping Travel Choices
Dr. Ian Walker, a professor of environmental psychology, discusses the importance of understanding habits in the context of sustainable transportation. Habits develop when behaviors are triggered automatically by the environment, without conscious thought. Disruptive events, such as moving to a new home or starting a new job, provide opportunities to break old habits and establish new ones. Policy interventions at these transition points can be effective in encouraging behavior change. However, changing deeply ingrained habits can be challenging and often requires long-term support and repetition. Physical reminders and implementation intentions can assist individuals in consciously making different travel choices.
Why Incentives and Disincentives Are Not Enough
The podcast highlights that relying solely on incentives and disincentives, such as price changes or advertising, is insufficient for shifting travel habits on a large scale. While these strategies might have some impact, they often fail to lead to long-term behavior change. Instead, it is crucial to recognize that the decision to drive or use sustainable transportation is often guided by emotional and intangible factors, rather than rational economic choices. To encourage meaningful change, policymakers should focus on creating environments that make driving shorter distances less convenient and promote alternatives, such as walking, cycling, and public transport.
The Role of Environmental Changes and Attitudes
The podcast emphasizes that changing the built environment plays a critical role in shaping travel behaviors. People's attitudes and preferences are influenced by the ease and convenience of different transportation options available to them. By creating environments that make active transportation and public transit more accessible, desirable, and efficient, individuals are more likely to adopt sustainable travel choices. Although initial resistance to change may occur, research shows that people's attitudes tend to align with their behaviors over time. Thus, policymakers have the opportunity to shape attitudes by reshaping the environment to incentivize walking, cycling, and using public transportation.
Even as gas prices hit historic highs, many Americans aren't driving any less — because so many of their communities are so car-dependent, they don't really have a choice. But what about people who could skip the pump but don't, simply because they're in the habit of driving everywhere they go? On this episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson sits down with environmental psychology expert Dr. Ian Walker to talk about why conventional strategies to disincentivize driving don't always work, and why even incentivizing other modes can't always tempt people onto buses, trains, bikes and sidewalks. And then we explore what it will really take to shift Americans' deeply-ingrained travel routines — and why every policymaker needs to understand the irrational, emotional, and deeply human reasons we make our travel choices. Give it a listen, and check out Dr. Walker's website and the Twitter thread that inspired the episode here.
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