Exploring stability in travel attitudes: Evidence from a repeated cross-sectional study in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Many travel behaviour studies focus on the interaction between attitudes and travel behaviour, but in doing so have used a multitude of attitude measurements. These studies often use surveys where respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a set of attitudinal statements. However, this set of statements sometimes varies very widely between studies, making it difficult to compare results across studies as well as complicating a thorough understanding of the motivations underlying travel. This paper therefore uses a repeated cross-sectional approach where the same set of attitudinal statements was asked in an online survey organized in 2016 and 2020 in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Sydney, NSW, Australia. Findings indicate that the same type of travel attitudes persist over time (in this study: a negative attitude towards travel in general, and a positive attitude towards cars). Moreover, these travel attitudes remain characterized by (largely) the same set of attitudinal statements, indicating at least some stability in the measurement of travel attitudes. Findings of this paper can thus be helpful in reducing the heterogeneity of attitudinal statements included in travel surveys.