The impact of COVID-19, climate change and working from home on travel choices

TL;DR

This study examines how COVID-19, climate change perceptions, and working from home influence travel choices in Scotland, highlighting shifts towards private and active transport modes and the need for policy to promote sustainable travel.

Contribution

It provides new insights into Scottish residents' travel preferences during the pandemic using survey data and discrete choice experiments, emphasizing the impact of COVID-19 risk and remote work on mode choice.

Findings

Car use remains stable regardless of working from home.

Bicycle use increases with higher working from home scenarios.

Public transport attractiveness decreases with COVID-19 risk.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic changed various aspects of our daily lives, including the way in which we travel and commute. Working from home has become significantly more popular since the beginning of the pandemic and is expected to remain a reality for many people even when COVID-19 no longer poses a threat. Decreased commuting trips may also have environmental benefits as people will be able to reduce their overall travel. Working from home may present an opportunity to accelerate the Scottish Government's 'Mission Zero for transport', which aims to decarbonise the transport sector by 2045, however, meeting this target also depends on restoring faith in public transport, which saw significant decreases in usage during the pandemic, and increasing other forms of sustainable travel (e.g., walking and cycling). In this study we investigate various aspects of Scottish residents' climate change and COVID-19 perceptions using survey data (n=1,050) collected in Scotland during January 2022. Quota restraints were enforced for age and gender to ensure the survey sample was approximately representative of the Scottish population. The survey also included a discrete choice experiment to investigate mode preferences for commuting trips in different working from home and COVID-19 risk scenarios. Our findings show that some people still need to be convinced that their travel choices can have an effect on climate change and the spread of infectious diseases. The discrete choice experiment showed that the use of cars for commuting is relatively consistent regardless of the working from home situation, however, bicycles become more popular in high working from home scenarios. As expected, the attractiveness of public transport decreases with increased COVID-19 risk and private modes become more popular.