Attitude Versus General Habit: Antecedents of Travel Mode Choice¹

TLDR

The authors surveyed 199 villagers and modeled car choice as a function of attitudes toward car and train, a script‑based measure of general car habit derived from responses to global imaginary journeys, and predictors of habit such as decisional involvement and household car‑use competition. The model fits the data well and confirms a trade‑off between attitude and habit: strong habit weakens the attitude‑behavior link, whereas weak habit strengthens it.

Abstract

A model of travel mode choice is tested by means of a survey among 199 inhabitants of a village. Car choice behavior for a particular journey is predicted from the attitude toward choosing the car and the attitude toward choosing an alternative mode (i.e., train), on the one hand, and from general car habit, on the other hand. Unlike traditional measures of habit, a script‐based measure was used. General habit was measured by travel mode choices in response to very global descriptions of imaginary journeys. In the model, habit is predicted from the degree of involvement with the decision‐making about travel mode choice for the particular journey (decisional involvement) and from the degree of competition in a household with respect to car use. The model proves satisfactory. Moreover, as suggested by Triandis (1977), there is a tradeoff between attitude and habit in the prediction of behavior: When habit is strong the attitude‐behavior relation is weak, whereas when habit is weak, the attitude‐behavior link is strong.