Are French millenials less car-oriented ?

Richard Grimal ()
Additional contact information
Richard Grimal: Cerema Equipe-projet ESPRIM - Centre d'Etudes et d'Expertise sur les Risques, l'Environnement, la Mobilité et l'Aménagement - Equipe-projet ESPRIM - Cerema - Centre d'Etudes et d'Expertise sur les Risques, l'Environnement, la Mobilité et l'Aménagement

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Generation effects play a key role in shaping long-term trends in travel behaviors. Though cohorts born until the 1970s have been increasingly car-focused, a reversal of this trend was noticed among the millenials. Determining whether this break-in-trend resulted from changes in living conditions and economic difficulties, or demonstrates a shift in attitudes away from the car, is critical to future travel trends. We bring a contribution to this debate in the French context, through a literature review followed by empirical findings, using the French Base of Local Household Travel Surveys. Through age-cohort analysis, we find evidence of changing travel patterns among the millenials, taking the form of a shift from driving to transit, along with a decline of car ownership. However, travel attitudes of the millenials play little role, as they do not differ substantially from their elders. Besides, we show that generation effects disappear once a large number of structural factors are controlled for. It looks like the main driver of change in travel behaviors comes from a shift in residential patterns, in relation with longer studies and a delayed entrance into the workforce, and possibly because of increasing work pressure, degraded transport conditions and changes in residential attitudes and desired lifestyles. In the end, these assumptions should be further explored, along with complementary research tracks, including the role of economic factors, the effects of learning experience, as well as heterogeneity in travel patterns, in relation with issues of social and spatial equity.

Keywords: Millenials; Life course; Travel patterns; Living conditions; Attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2020, Special issue "Young people's behavior", 79

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-02441185

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().