Everyday leisure travel : Understanding car use for social and recreational trip purposes

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of everyday leisure travel for social and recreational trip purposes by describing and problematising car use for such trips. Leisure trips are a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and reductions are needed to mitigate climate change. Technical solutions, such as electric vehicles, contribute but research has demonstrated that behaviour change is also needed. Travel behaviour is therefore the focus of the thesis. The thesis includes five research papers with different focus and method. The first paper describes characteristics of leisure travel based on travel survey data and creates an understanding of the variation between societal groups and leisure trip purposes. The first paper is followed by two segmentation studies, one based on qualitative interview data and the other on quantitative travel survey data. Both studies focus on mode choice for leisure travel and provide clues to the possibility for different groups to change to less car-oriented leisure travel. The fourth paper learns from changes in leisure travel behaviour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodological challenges, such as assigning the correct number of trips and kilometres travelled for leisure purposes in trip chains, are explored in the fifth paper. The discussion revolves around three themes. First, challenges on how to define and measure everyday leisure trips make it difficult to categorise leisure trips in travel surveys. For example, leisure trips often have more than one purpose. Second, insights into mode choice behaviour reveal how flexibility is highly valued for leisure trips in particular. However, knowing flexibility is available is more important than being able to go by car at any time. Third, the thesis shows that it is important to match public transport supply with leisure travel needs and improve the possibility of carrying and storing things without a car. Also, the joint character of leisure trips poses challenges in reducing car use. More effort should therefore be put into targeting trips when fewer people travel together, for which the climate efficiency potential is greater. The conclusions of the thesis demonstrate that there is no “one size fits all” solution when finding measures to reduce car use for leisure trips. Instead, a variety of measures is needed to be relevant and effective for different leisure trip purposes and groups of travellers. Finally, due to the importance of leisure trips for our well-being, changes must be made with consideration.