| dc.description.abstract | Background: Active commuting involves physical metabolic work and can lead to accumulation of physical activity throughout the day, which may prevent lifestyle related diseases. Lifestyle related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart diseases, and chronic lung diseases are the main causes of early death on a worldwide basis. While a sedentary lifestyle has become common in modern time. In Norway only 30% of the adult population satisfy the health government’s recommendation for physical activity and only 25% use active commuting (bicycle/walking) as transport mode in their daily trips. Political efforts to increase active commuting are mostly directed to economic, environmental, and infrastructural factors. However, humans live in societies and are social beings who tend to be influenced by other people. Consequently, social norms can affect travel behaviour which may be an important area for guiding policy interventions.
Objective: The aim of this study was to examine associations between social norms (descriptive/injunctive) and active commuting (walking/cycling).
Method: The data material used in this study was cross-sectional based on a survey about factors that may influence transport mode choice, which was originally conducted by the Norwegian Centre for Transport Research in 2023. The sample in this study consisted of 448 participants (62.7% men /37.3% women) with average age 44 years. Logistic regression was used to investigate associations between descriptive and injunctive norms and active commuting (walking/cycling). It was adjusted for the possible confounders including gender, age, urban/rural areas, country of birth, education level, employment status, children in household, and the possible mediator attitude towards active transport. The statistical software Jamovi (version 2.3) was used for the analyses.
Results: The findings of this study showed that there was a weak association between social norms (descriptive and injunctive) and cycling, with attitude accounting for a part of this association. No association was found between social norms and walking.
Conclusion: The current study found that social norms were not decisive for participants’ choice of active transport. However, social norms were more influential for participants’ choice of commuting by bicycle, compared to with walking. Due to results from this study, it may be beneficial to do political effort in people’s social environment to affect people to cycle more in their daily commute. To increase walking, it may seem like the social environment and social norms are not decisive, and attention to other areas may be more profitable. | |
