Willingness to reduce travel consumption to support a low-carbon transition beyond COVID-19

Tanya O'Garra and Roger Fouquet

Ecological Economics, 2022, vol. 193, issue C

Abstract: This paper explores people's willingness to reduce travel consumption in support of the transition to a low-carbon pathway beyond COVID-19, using new survey data from UK car drivers and air travellers. Evidence from our study indicates that reductions of 24% - 30% to car use and 20% - 26% to air travel could be sustained in the long term. This potentially could lead to annual reductions of 343–529 kgCO2 per car driver (20% - 29% of pre-COVID-19 car emissions) and 215–359 kgCO2 per air traveller (10% - 20% of pre-COVID-19 emissions from flying), suggesting that behavioural change may be a major route to emissions reductions. We find that stated voluntary reductions are greater among those who report having ‘more time to do creative things’ since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Hence, recovery policies promoting low-carbon leisure time may be a key to consumption reductions. We also find that higher-income travellers consume and pollute substantially more than the rest, and yet there is little difference in relative voluntary reductions across the income distribution. We conclude that behaviour associated with affluence represents a major barrier to a low-carbon transition, and that policies must address over-consumption associated with affluence as a priority.

Keywords: Consumption; Travel; Carbon Emissions; Preferences; Travel Reductions; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003566
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:193:y:2022:i:c:s0921800921003566

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107297

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().