by Martin Lanzendorf
Changes in individual’s travel behaviour play a central role when assessing the impact of policies designed to affect the travel of persons or when forecasting the future demand for travel. Previous research has very much focused on daily travel and factors affecting this from a static perspective. However, dynamic changes are an important elment of travel behaviour (see Goodwin et al. 1987 and Goodwin 1998), and these dynamic effects cannot be captured with static models and cross-sectional data (Dargay 2001). We assume that travel behaviour research until now has been limited in its ability to understand individual’s behavioural changes because of at least three limitations which were important for the research design presented below: first, surprisingly little research has been carried out on the effect of long term decisions on travel behaviour (as an exception see for example Cervero and Landis 1992, Ommeren et al. 1999 on the impact of job relocations on commuting) although previous research showed that habits play a central role for the short-term decisions (Bamberg 1996, Axhausen et al. 2001; for leisure travel see Lanzendorf 2001). Therefore, the question how and when travel habits change becomes of interest and, thus, how decisions on a higher time scale affect the travel habits. Second, most frequently travel research is limited to the use of crosssectional instead of longitudinal data. Although panel studies are frequently suggested to overcome these deficits, the long duration of data collecting, high costs and high panel mortality rates limit their feasibility and reliability. Moreover, panels do not adjust flexibly enough to new research questions. Finally, travel research focuses more on statistical correlations between relevant factors than on causal relationships. To our knowledge the use of qualitative methods and the search for causal relationships between relevant factors is still very limited.
In this paper we present the theoretical framework of ‘mobility biographies’ with which we aim to address the limitations of previous research by using a life course approach. The life course approach has been put forward by demographic and housing researchers in various research fields. From this viewpoint people’s behaviour can be explained by its continuity over life time and by specific events that involve major changes in other domains of life. The term ‘mobility biography‘, then, refers to the total of an individual’s longitudinal trajectories in the mobility domain and assumes that events in these trajectories exist or, put in other words, that at certain moments in individual’s life the daily travel patterns, the car ownership or other mobility characteristics change to an important degree.
In this paper we present the theoretical framework of ‘mobility biographies’ with which we aim to address the limitations of previous research by using a life course approach. The life course approach has been put forward by demographic and housing researchers in various research fields. From this viewpoint people’s behaviour can be explained by its continuity over life time and by specific events that involve major changes in other domains of life. The term ‘mobility biography‘, then, refers to the total of an individual’s longitudinal trajectories in the mobility domain and assumes that events in these trajectories exist or, put in other words, that at certain moments in individual’s life the daily travel patterns, the car ownership or other mobility characteristics change to an important degree.
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