MIND-SETS project - Understanding the motivations behind travel choices

Challenge

The MIND-SETS research project – funded by the EU - provided a new approach to understanding travel choices across Europe, focused on understanding mobility in terms of lifestyle patterns, set against social, economic and technological trends.

It brought together mainstream sociologists, environmental psychologists and economists with travel behaviour specialists to assess how to change the professional mind-set of mobility stakeholders.

Solution

The research reviewed current technological and sociological trends, and analysed existing knowledge on how they affect travel behaviour, focusing on the following areas:

-Social networks and social media on travel behaviour;

-Teleworking and online shopping;

-Urban forms and the built environment; and

-The impact of new vehicle technologies and new infrastructure.

The project concluded that the decisions affecting individual travel choice vary according to the generation (age) of the user, the different values of those generations (such as propensity to share mobility), and the desire to take up new technologies.

Impact

The insight and analysis led to the development of the MIND-SETS guidelines and Knowledge Centre, which help practitioners make better decisions regarding mobility, taking user behaviour and psychology into consideration. SLR apply this understanding of modern travel behaviour to their wider transport planning services.