Are young adults car-loving urbanites? Comparing young and older adults’ residential location choice, travel behavior and attitudes

Jonas De Vos and Farzad Alemi

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2020, vol. 132, issue C, 986-998

Abstract: Previous studies mostly indicate that young adults travel less by car compared to their older counterparts, partly due to postponing driving license holding and car ownership. Furthermore, these young adults might also prefer living in urban, low-traffic neighborhoods, further reducing car use. In this study we analyze the residential location choice, travel behavior and travel attitudes of young versus older adults (respectively born after 1984 and before 1985), using 1376 recently relocated residents from the city of Ghent (Belgium). Results indicate that travel mode frequency does not considerably differ between young and older adults, although young adults – compared to older adults – live more often in urban-type neighborhoods. This might be partly explained by young adults’ relatively positive attitudes towards car use and negative attitudes towards walking and low-traffic investments. These attitudes consequently seem to counterbalance the effects of the residential neighborhood on travel mode frequency. The fact that respondents’ travel attitudes are often not in line with their chosen residential neighborhood suggests limited self-selection effects. Results from this study partly contradict earlier findings on young adults’ travel behavior and indicate that further research is needed on the links between travel behavior, attitudes and residential location choice of different age groups.

Keywords: Young adults; Travel behavior; Residential location choice; Attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856419305038
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:transa:v:132:y:2020:i:c:p:986-998

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2020.01.004

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().