changing travel behaviour through visual campaign

66Surajit Bhattacharya

Surajit Bhattacharya, Principal Architect and Senior Urban Planner with Sthapatyangan Email Id: [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION

Marketing is one approach which seeks to distribute its messages to the public via posters, leaflets, flyers, and advertisements in the print or electronic media (Bonsall, 2005). In the context of transport and travel behaviour, marketing could be used to present information with regard to travel options, provide information and advice, raise awareness level and change perceptions, attitudes, norms so as preferences. Commuters, travellers and journey makers could be influenced by the kind of symbolic imageries in the context of transport for influencing certain kind of undesirable travel behaviour when motorised transport is seen as a future threat to human environment (Gärling and Steg, 2007) and general public health as well due to increased use of private car.

The average distance walked per person per year fell from 255 miles in 1975/76 to 192 miles in 2003 (DFT, 2004) and bicycle distance fell from 51 miles per person per year to 34 miles over the same period in England (DFT, 2004). Reductions in cycling and walking have reduced the daily human energy expenditure (Fox and Hillsdon, 2006) contributing to increase in adult obesity from 15% in 1993 to 24% in 2006 (NHS, 2008). The very environmental and health concerns have led to the finding ways and means for developing and implementing Transport Policy measures by reducing and changing car use (Kitamura and Fuji, 1998; Kitamura et.al., 1997).These measures are considered as the ‘soft measures’ which are the policy implications of the behavioural theories.

AbstractIn the context of transport and travel behaviour, marketing could be used to present information with regard to travel options, provide information and advice, raise awareness level and change perceptions, attitudes, norms so as preferences. Commuters, travellers and journey makers could be influenced by the kind of symbolic imageries in the context of transport for influencing certain kind of undesirable travel behaviour, when motorised transport is seen as a future threat to human environment and general public health as well due to increased use of private car. In this paper, the behavioural theories have been applied to design a caption to address changing travel behaviour. This design could be used to change travel behaviour in a specific context having both visual and textual elements to facilitate the change of travel behaviour.

Changing Travel Behaviour through Visual Campaign

Surajit Bhattacharya


Institute of Town Planners, India Journal 10 x 3, July - September 2013, 66-73

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2. BACK GROUND OF UK POLICY MEASURES FOR CHANGING TRAVEL BEHAVIOUR

In 2008, modal share in the UK shows the dominance of car modal share as is evident from Fig. 1. It can be observed that the 47% of the average number of trips made by car / van and that of average distance travelled by car/van is 51%.The emerging fact that hard policy measures such as physical changes to transport infrastructure or operations, traffic engineering,

Fig. 1 : Transport Modal Split UK 2008

Source : Musselwhite, C

Fig. 2 : Norm Activate Model (Schwatz, 1977)

Source : Chatterjee, K.



control of road space and changes in price alone fail to deliver the needed car use reduction (Kitamura et al. , 1997; Stopher, 2004). Perhaps these sobering experiences are reasons for the demonstrated interest by transport planners in a range of initiatives which are widely described as soft transport policy measures (Jones and Sloman, 2006; Rose and Ampt, 2001; Taniguchi et al., 2007). The main feature is that they try to influence individual choice by means of information and persuasion. Frequently implemented examples of Soft Transport Policy measures include workplace travel plans, personalised travel planning, public transport marketing, and travel awareness campaigns (Gärling and Fujii, 2006).

It is therefore imperative in the present context to identify psychological determinants of people´s current travel behaviour as well as their motivation to change this behaviour. Many a times hard measures are not welcomed by the public in general and have political implications attached to them, however soft measures are perceived as to directly influence the ‘decision making’ process by changing or correcting people’s perceptions about a specific type of travel behaviour. Last decade has seen psychological researchers concentrating more

on a person’s decision to use the car has been guided by mainly two behavioural theories; they are the Norm-Activation Model (NAM) developed by Schwartz (1977) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) developed by Ajzen (1991).

3. BEHAVIOURAL THEORIES

Schwartz (1977) developed the Norm-Activation Model (NAM) (Fig. 2) to explain pro-social behaviours. Later

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on using NAM Behavioural Theory researchers conceptualised reduction in car use as a behaviour primarily driven by pro-social objectives. According to the assumption personal norm is viewed as the most important determinant of travel mode choice. In his Norm-activation Theory, (Schwartz, 1977) defines personal norms as self expectations that are based on internalized values. Personal norms reflect commitment with internalized values and are experienced as feelings of personal obligation to engage in a certain behaviour (Schwartz, 1977). Personal norms will influence behaviour when they are activated. Activation occurs when (a) someone is aware of the consequences of one’s behaviour for the welfare of others, and (b) one ascribes at least some responsibility for these consequences to oneself. When these conditions are met, the personal norm is considered to be activated, bringing about a feeling of personal obligation that guides behaviour (Schwartz and Howard, 1984). The perception that one is responsible for a behaviour causing harm to other people frequently triggers feeling of guilt (Weiner, 1995), which is a pro-social emotion in that it results in a felt obligation to compensate for the caused damage (Baumeister, 1998).

The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Fig. 3) is an extension of the Theory of Reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and was developed by Ajzen (1991) which assumes that a behaviour depends on the relative strength of the intentions to perform that behaviour having a combination of behavioural beliefs and attitude toward the behaviour or the combination of normative beliefs and subjective norms leading to the intention to perform that behaviour or that of combination of control beliefs and perceived behavioural control as antecedent variables to the intention to perform the behaviour (Ajzen 1991). In the context of transport, while forming an intention towards two different modes of transport, people take into account difficulties associated with the transport modes along with the attitudes towards these travel modes (Bamberg et al., 2011). Travel mode choice is guided by a rational evaluation of behavioural consequences. The sum of perceived positive and negative consequences determines the global attitude toward a transport option. Attitude does not directly determine travel behaviour but indirectly via behavioural intention. In the TPB social norms are primarily conceptualised as perceived social pressure that is the expectations of significant reference persons to use or not use a specific transport option. The theory of planned behaviour further assumes that when perceived behavioural control

Fig. 3 : Theory of Planned Behaviour

Source : http://people.umass.edu/aizen/tpb.diag.html



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corresponds to objective behavioural control; it predicts behaviour directly (Bamberg et al., 2011).

A third behavioural model Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour was developed by Triandis (1977). This theory was originally created to predict interactions amongst public. The model is based on three main attributes in terms of their importance in influencing behaviour and these are habit, intention and facilitating conditions as shown in (Fig. 4). In both TPB and NAM it is found that the behaviour is well thought of and deliberate. But in the theory of interpersonal behaviour

habit accounted for the behaviour which is repeated regularly and is performed subconsciously without being consciously thinking about the behaviour before performance. Transport related behaviours are also found to be related to habits and thus this theory better predicts the behaviour in the transport context (Bamberg and Schmidt, 2003). Also this model includes emotion which has been found to be another antecedent influencing intention without conscious effort and differentiates assumptions of conscious behaviour proposed in the NAM and TPB. Similar to habit even emotions do not require conscious thought to occur (DFT toolkit 2011).

Relevance of behavioural theories to travel behaviour their importance In the Norm Activation Model, personal norm is found to be influenced by ascription of consequences and ascription of responsibility. In the context of transport increasing car use is contributing to climate change, congestion on the road, obesity and air pollution which are the consequence of performing these behaviours and in turn affecting the people in general. This behaviour (car use) carries with it the social responsibilities and consequently social pressure activates personal norms to change to different travel mode which will not cause harm to the society and finally perform that behaviour. The main policy implications of this theory are to create awareness about the social and environmental impacts of such behaviour (car use) and persuade people to make a difference within their ways and means by changing to cycling to work. This model ignores, habit, self interest and perceived behaviour control.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour when applied to the cycling behaviour in the context of transport shown in Fig. 5, it could be found that the antecedent beliefs like cycling to work is fun, lots of people like me to cycle to work and it is easy to cycle to work represent the behavioural, normative and control beliefs respectively. Behavioural beliefs strengthen the attitude towards cycling which is ‘I like cycling to work’, normative beliefs reinforces the subjective

Fig. 4 : Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour

Source : DFT Insight Tool Kit



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norm i.e ‘It’s normal for me to cycle to work’ and control beliefs facilitates perceived behavioural control i.e ‘It is easy for me to cycle to work’. All of them combined influence ‘I intend to cycle to work’ and finally ‘I cycle to work’. Policy implications of theory of planned behaviour are changing people’s beliefs that people hold about a behaviour and their evaluation of those beliefs. People need to be informed about the behaviour of other people and their opinions and options are to be made easier for the people to use. The theory ignores habit emotions affect and morals.

The Fig. 6 illustrates how Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour can be applied to travel behaviour in the context of transport. Considering the cycling to work as a travel behaviour, it could be seen that the final behavioural outcome (‘I cycle to work’) is the same as for the Theory of Planned Behaviour example shown above. But the theory includes wider range of factors such as emotions (Feeling of pleasure while cycling to work), affect (I enjoy cycling to work). Also habit (cycling to work is something I do all the time without having to think about it) and past behaviour (I have cycled to work many times before) influence the behaviour directly. Facilitating conditions such as ‘short enough distances between home and work’, and ‘low enough traffic volumes’ with slow traffic on the route as well influence final behavioural outcome of ‘I cycle to work’. This theory of interpersonal behaviour takes into account an array of attributes for determining the actual performance of behaviour.

4. DESIGN CONCEPTThe designed poster, as part of the awareness campaign is to trigger the behavioural beliefs towards optimistic side of the cycling behaviour. The poster has been designed in two parts. The first part has been inspired by the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the second part has been inspired by the Norm Activation Model. Both the theories have been jointly applied to make the campaign poster more effective one.

Fig. 5 : Theory of Planned Behaviour to the Transport Context, fusing the example of Cyling to Work


Fig. 6 : Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour to Cycling to work




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Since it has been established that the adverse outcomes of increasing car use such as climate change because of the emission of green house gases and health problems like obesity, diabetes and blood pressure which are the direct consequence of lack of exercise are increasing social cost rather than increasing social benefits. The content of the poster includes both visual and textual elements in it to convey a message underpinning the fact of confirmatory information about the cycling behaviour. The first part represents a cyclist which is symbolic to cycling behaviour and aiming for behavioural change towards cycling together with the textual matter in it. The textual message ‘Research shows that we can’ refers to the empirical evidences related to the ability to change towards healthy life style as has been signified by ‘add 2 years to our life expectancy while we cycle and also burn 450 calories per hour (Mcmullan, 2007)’. The message has been written in first person emphasising ‘we can’ as to have an inclusive effect rather than just a piece of advice to the people. The arrow indicates an increased stress to perform a desirable behaviour in the back drop of the suggestive information backed by the empirical evidences.

The second part of the poster design deals with the individual responsibility for the environment and people’s wellbeing for enhanced ‘quality of life’. The Norm Activation Model assumes that the personal norm is influenced by acknowledgment of the consequences and responsibility as an individual holds towards the global issues affecting people. In this part of the design the visual element portrays a cyclist kicking the car off the road, which is symbolic to resisting to a behaviour having the dominance of car dependency life style. The textual matter ‘let us think together for our future’ reiterates and creates a niche for thinking together for the future commitment to the people and attempts to inform about the responsibility towards a bright and sustainable future linked to the second part of the textual element ‘let us clear the air and the road to be healthy and wealthy’; which implies responsibility lies in controlling air pollution which is the consequence of increased use of car leading to road congestion. Once the responsibility towards air pollution and road congestion is realised then the personal norm is activated and will be a decisive factor for forming

Fig. 1 : Designed Caption



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personal norm which will lead to bring about changes in the behaviour. The information asserts that while the behaviour towards car is changed that is to say ‘using bicycle’ will subsequently make way for better health and saving money directly from reduced car dependency as well in a broader perspective saving on social costs for enhancement of social benefits. The arrow in this respect clearly completes the intention of the message by establishing relationship between the responsibility and consequence to the formation of personal norm.

5. CRITIQUE TO THE PRACTICAL ASPECTS AND EVALUATION OF APPLIED MEASURES

Providing information is the first step towards influencing behaviour change rather than an end point. Many people have less awareness level about the benefits of cycling and walking and their beliefs about using car is firm which is considered as the pre-contemplation stage in Trans Theoretical Model (TTM) (stages of change model). The process of raising conscious level is possible with the help of information dissemination which is practical to the attempt to make changes to the behaviour in any given context of any kind in general. Pre and Post information dissemination, the need arises for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the awareness campaign which involves stages in evaluation of awareness, attitudes and beliefs, intentions and that of behaviour as shown in the Fig. 7, the model used to evaluate a campaign. Awareness level could be evaluated with the help of simple survey asking questions about the liking and understanding of the campaign in the context of changing travel behaviour in the scale of 0-10. Attitudes and intentions could be evaluated considering the pre and post application of the measures and changes occurred as a consequence to the campaign in a definite time scale. Finally, behaviour could be evaluated by actually observing the individual behaviour changes in the said time scale.

6. CONCLUSIONSBehavioural theories have been already applied to changing travel behaviour and are effective soft policy instruments to achieve reduced dependency on the use of car but actual evidences of sustained control on such behaviour has not been yet established and require longitudinal research on such application of Soft policies to establish their efficacy in the context of changing travel behaviour.

REFERENCESAjzen, I. (1991) The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, 179-211. Ajzen, I. / University of Massachusetts (2012) Icek Ajzen. Available from: http://people.umass.edu/aizen/index.html [Accessed 12 Apr 2012].Anable, J., Lane, B.and Kelay, T. (2006). A review of public attitudes to climate change and transport: summary report. Research report for the Department for Transport, London.

Fig. 7: Model Used to Evaluate a Compaign

Source: Avineri, E.



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