Attitudes towards the environment related to travel and personal mobility

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between personal mobility and attitudes towards the environment related to travel behavior considering sociodemographic characteristics. The dataset used for this study was collected through a web-based survey carried out in Valencia (Spain) during 2017 and 1684 valid responses were obtained. In this research a subpart of the survey is used, including 5 items which measure attitudes towards the environment related to travel and 5 items to measure personal mobility. The items were measured using a 5 points Likert Scale. Additionally, individual and household demographic characteristics are considered. The methodology of this research consist on descriptive analysis and frequency distributions. Factor Analysis (Exploratory and Confirmatory) is used to construct the latent variables which measure attitudes and Mann-Whitney U is test are assessed to find significant differences among the variables of the study. Preliminary results show that environmental concerns are taken into account by women as a factor to decrease their car use, while men do not consider this factor that relevant. Next, young people and men carry our more activities while traveling in public transport, for instance: reading, listening to music or checking social networks. The results of this research are useful for the development of transport policies to promote sustainable transport.