ABSTRACT
COVID-19 restrictions imposed significant changes on human mobility patterns, with some studies finding significant increases or decreases in cycling. However, to date there is little understanding on how the neighbourhood-level built environment influenced cycling behaviour during the COVID-19 restrictions. As different neighbourhood have different built environment characteristics, it is possible that cycling trends varied across different built environment settings. We aimed to answer this question by examining recreational cycling during different stages of lockdown in Melbourne, Australia. We compared self-reported recreational cycling frequency (weekly) data from 1344 respondents between pre-COVID and two different stages in lockdown. We tested whether the built environment of their residential neighbourhood and different sociodemographic characteristics influenced leisure cycling rates and whether the effect of these factors varied between different stages of COVID-19 restriction. We found that cycling declined significantly during the two stages of COVID-19 lockdown. Cycling infrastructure density and connectivity are two built environment factors that had a significant effect on limiting the decline in leisure cycling during the pandemic. Furthermore, men and younger people had higher cycling rates in comparison to other groups, suggesting that restrictions on indoor activities and travel limits were not enough to encourage women or older people to cycle more during the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the 'disagreement' or dissonance between travel attitudes and behaviours. This has shown that when people experience travel-related dissonance they are less satisfied with their travel experience. However, what remains unclear is whether people experiencing dissonance are more likely to change their travel attitude or their behaviour, so that they are more closely aligned. Moreover, it is unclear whether and how life events, such as having a child, interact with creating or reducing travel-related dissonance. Using data from a large and well-designed longitudinal study, this paper addresses these two gaps in the literature on travel-related cognitive dissonance through an exploratory study. The findings suggest that dissonant travellers are more likely to change their segment membership than consonant travellers. Furthermore, in line with the theory of cognitive dissonance, people may adjust either their attitudes or behaviours to achieve a state of consonance. This suggests that policymakers should not only focus on subtle nudges aimed at changing attitudes (and subsequently behaviours) in desirable directions but also on implementing policies aimed at directly influencing behaviours, assuming that attitudes will follow.
ABSTRACT
Significant disruptive events have the potential to change travel behaviour in the long-term. COVID-19 has caused the most significant disruption of travel behaviour in living memory. One of the most notable changes has been the increase in working from home, which was forced upon many workers during lockdowns and 'stay at home' orders. But much is still unknown about the long-term impacts of those changes. This study explores the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on changing work from behaviours using the Transtheoretical Model of behaviour change. The Transtheoretical Model has been widely used to study behaviour change in health, with some application to travel behaviour change. In this paper, we explore whether people's 'stage of change' before COVID-19 has an impact on their long-term intent to work from home. We found that only 12% of respondents had considered working from home more before COVID, yet those that had were far more likely to intend to work from home in the long term. In addition, we unpack the influence of 'process of change' factors, some of which point to a potential 're-norming' of attitudes toward working from home. Although self-efficacy (feeling capable to work from home) was an important factor, it was not as important as the attitudes of employers and colleagues toward working from home. Implications of the findings for research and practice are explored.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to how people live, work and travel. There has been a recent outburst of research on the short-term impacts that the pandemic has had on travel behaviour. However, the long-term impact of the pandemic on travel behaviour is still uncertain and difficult to predict. In particular, young adults are facing some of the most significant disruptions from the pandemic; these disruptions are likely to have long-term impacts on their lives. This study aims to unpack the direct and indirect effects that COVID-19 may have on the travel behaviour of young adults. It does this through in-depth interviews with 26 young adults living in Melbourne and Victoria, Australia. Interviews suggest that while the pandemic has had significant impacts on the short-term travel behaviour of all young adults, the long-term impacts are more complex and mediated by how they are moving through key life milestones. Many respondents are relatively unimpacted by the pandemic. Others have faced a significant disruption to their lives. Those who had planned to live or work overseas have found their life plans 'accelerated', which may also accelerate their dependence on the car. In contrast, those who have lost work are facing a significant delay to their life plans. We propose a framework for how COVID-19 may directly and indirectly impact travel behaviour in the short- and long-term. The strongest impacts on mobility, through changes to life stage transitions, are indirect and unevenly spread across the population of young adults.
ABSTRACT
People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1-4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.
