ReviewPsychological theories of car use: An integrative review and conceptual framework
Introduction
Transport accounts for approximately 64% of world oil consumption and global transport energy use has doubled in the past 30 years, mainly because of increased car use (International Energy Agency, 2015). Without new regulatory policies, global demand for road travel is likely to double by 2050 with rising numbers of cars in developing countries (International Energy Agency, 2015). This has serious ramifications for human health and environment (World Health Organisation, 2016). Car use reduces physical activity during commuting (Flint et al., 2014, Wener and Evans, 2007) while substantially increasing carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions compared to public transport use (Shapiro, Hassett, & Arnold, 2002). In the longer term, affordable low-carbon or carbon-neutral cars may reduce the environmental impact of driving but large increases in car use are predicted before such technologies become widely available (Clark and Cooke, 2016, Falcocchio and Levinson, 2015, pp. 53–69). Meanwhile, encouraging more sustainable travel is crucial to mitigating these worrying trends (Garcia-Sierra, van den Bergh, & Miralles-Guasch, 2015).
This will depend on persuading the public, including drivers, to use public transport or walk or cycle, especially for commuting (Van Acker, Goodwin, & Witlox, 2016). While many interventions have been tested there are surprisingly few robust interventions that have been found to reduce car use (Graham-Rowe, Skippon, Gardner, & Abraham, 2011). Research that elucidates the processes by which transport modes are chosen and used routinely is crucial for optimising intervention effectiveness. Models developed within a psychology of transportation can identify antecedents of car use and determinants of behaviour change that may be targeted by interventions (van Acker, van Wee, & Witlox, 2010). Understanding theorised mechanisms also allows researchers to describe how and why interventions are or are not effective. For example, was an intervention unsuccessful because it had no effect on the targeted mechanism of action or because the targeted mechanism had no or only weak effects on transport behaviour patterns? Robust application and testing of such models or theories in intervention evaluations affords tests of theoretical accuracy and comprehensiveness so facilitating theory development and refinement (Rothman, 2004).
Past reviews in this area have focused on identifying and evaluating specific predictors and change mechanisms underlying car use, without mapping out their relations with other predictors and change mechanisms (Gardner and Abraham, 2008, Klöckner, 2013). Such reviews indicate that, while antecedents specified by a range of theories are correlated with car use, many theories do not comprehensively explain car use (because key mechanisms are absent), (e.g., the Theory of Planned Behaviour [Ajzen, 1991] and the Norm Activation Model [Schwartz, 1977]). Thus more comprehensive theories that develop and combine existing theoretical understanding are needed, hence the proposed Comprehensive Action Determination Model (Klöckner & Blöbaum, 2010) and the Stage Model of Self-Regulated Behaviour Change (Bamberg, 2013b).
It is also clear that empirical tests of proposed theories do not always comprehensively operationalise the complete range of mechanisms specified by the theory. So it is important to distinguish between compete and partial tests of theories when assessing the extent to which those theories are empirically supported.
This paper reviews psychological theories that have been applied to understanding car use. Theories are a set of concepts and/or statements that specify how phenomena relate to each other, describe a system for what is known, and explain and predict phenomena (Bem and Looren de Jong, 1997, Chalmer, 1976). We had four aims in the current work: 1) identify psychological theories applied to understanding car use, 2) assess the extent to which the identified theories had been applied within the transportation literature, 3) assess the quality of theory utilisation and application within identified studies, and 4) assess the comprehensiveness of theories in terms of their inclusion of relevant mechanisms.
Section snippets
Methods
Psychological theories of car use were identified using four sources: electronic databases, web searching, forward and backward searching of reference lists and hand searching of key transport psychology journals. Empirical application of the theories was identified from electronic databases and the reference lists of retrieved articles.
Study characteristics
An overview of the study characteristics is presented below with more detailed information found in Table A.1. Very high levels of agreement were observed for decisions on inclusion of articles (title and abstract, and full text screening: 100%), data extraction (theory identification: 100%; construct identification: 96% study information: 94%) and quality assessment (overall: 92%; theory application: 94%). Thus further statistical assessment of inter-rater reliability was judged to be
Discussion
Our review identified thirty-two unique studies that applied fifteen different psychological theories to understanding car use. Some theories were more frequently applied than others with seven theories applied in more than 80% of studies and eight theories only applied once. Thus some theories are more influential than others. This is consistent with reviews of theory utilisation across other areas (e.g., Abraham et al., 1998, Davis et al., 2015, Glanz and Bishop, 2010). This is likely due to
Conclusions
Humanity is causing measurable changes to our ecosystem and only changes in our behaviours at population levels can arrest these trends. The current work attempted to integrate an extensive psychological literature exploring the psychological determinants of car use as an exemplar of how psychological constructs can help us better understand what drives and motivates environmentally-relevant behaviours. Combining 15 theories we developed an integrative conceptual framework of antecedents of car
Author's note
The appendices mentioned in the text and additional supplementary documents are available upon request from the authors.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Prof. Harry Heft and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper. This work was undertaken as part of the first author's PhD funded by a Shell Global Solutions (UK) award to CA and supervised by CA, MW and SS. CA is partially funded by UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care of the South West Peninsula PenCLAHRC. MW is partially
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