Why Do They Ride with Others? Meta-Analysis of Factors Influencing Travelers to Carpool
CTF Service Research Center, and Department of Social and Psychological Studies, Karlstad University, SE-65188 Karlstad, Sweden
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Sustainability 2019, 11(8), 2414; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082414
Received: 1 April 2019 / Revised: 19 April 2019 / Accepted: 20 April 2019 / Published: 24 April 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental and Behavioral Consequences of Interventions for Sustainable Travel)
Carpooling can be viewed as a simple intervention to reduce congestion, environmental problems, and land use for parking spaces. The present study assembled 18 studies on carpooling from all over the world that were published during the last five years (2014–2018) for a meta-analysis. By calculating effect sizes of 20 different factors, the study aimed to understand user characteristics, motives, and barriers to carpooling, and to gain insights about carpool interventions. Our results indicate that carpooling is very weakly related to socio-demographic variables, and that psychological factors are becoming more important, including monetary and time benefits, reducing congestion, and environmental concerns. Policy-makers can increase carpooling by offering cheaper parking or special parking spaces for carpoolers and introducing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Not surprisingly, fuel prices influence mode choice. The overall findings support previous results, but we found judgmental factors becoming more important for the choice to carpool. We conclude that carpooling services still fail to include many potential users and to serve users adequately. The challenge of meeting the needs of all users requires new approaches to designing carpool concepts, systems, and encounters.
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Keywords:
behavior; carpool; effect size; intervention; motivation; meta-analysis
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MDPI and ACS Style
Olsson, L.E.; Maier, R.; Friman, M. Why Do They Ride with Others? Meta-Analysis of Factors Influencing Travelers to Carpool. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2414. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082414
AMA Style
Olsson LE, Maier R, Friman M. Why Do They Ride with Others? Meta-Analysis of Factors Influencing Travelers to Carpool. Sustainability. 2019; 11(8):2414. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082414
Chicago/Turabian StyleOlsson, Lars E., Raphaela Maier, and Margareta Friman. 2019. "Why Do They Ride with Others? Meta-Analysis of Factors Influencing Travelers to Carpool" Sustainability 11, no. 8: 2414. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082414
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