Willingness to reduce travel consumption to support a low-carbon transition beyond COVID-19
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
O'Garra, Tanya
Fouquet, Roger
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This paper explores people's willingness to reduce travel consumption in support of the transition to a low-carbon pathway beyond COVID-19, using new survey data from UK car drivers and air travellers. Evidence from our study indicates that reductions of 24% - 30% to car use and 20% - 26% to air travel could be sustained in the long term. This potentially could lead to annual reductions of 343-529 kgCO2 per car driver (20% - 29% of pre-COVID-19 car emissions) and 215-359 kgCO2 per air traveller (10% - 20% of pre-COVID-19 emissions from flying), suggesting that behavioural change may be a major route to emissions reductions. We find that stated voluntary reductions are greater among those who report having 'more time to do creative things' since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Hence, recovery policies promoting low-carbon leisure time may be a key to consumption reductions. We also find that higher-income travellers consume and pollute substantially more than the rest, and yet there is little difference in relative voluntary reductions across the income distribution. We conclude that behaviour associated with affluence represents a major barrier to a low-carbon transition, and that policies must address over-consumption associated with affluence as a priority.
Date Issued
2022-03-01
Date Acceptance
2021-11-13
Citation
Ecological Economics, 2022, 193
ISSN
0921-8009
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Ecological Economics
Volume
193
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34840426
Subjects
Carbon Emissions
Consumption
COVID-19
Preferences
Travel
Travel Reductions
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Netherlands
Article Number
107297
Date Publish Online
2021-11-23