Moving between mobility cultures: what affects the travel behavior of new residents?

This paper analyzes the complex interdependencies between residential relocation and daily travel behavior by focusing on modal change. To help explain changes in daily travel patterns after a long distance move between cities the concept of urban mobility cultures is introduced. This comprehensive approach integrates objective and subjective elements of urban mobility, such as urban form and socio-economics on the one hand, and lifestyle orientations and mode preferences on the other, within one socio-technical framework. Empirically, the study is based on a survey conducted among people who recently moved between the German cities Bremen, Hamburg and the Ruhr area. Bivariate analyses and linear multiple regression models are applied to analyze changes in car, rail-based and bicycle travel. This is done by integrating variables that account for urban mobility cultures and controlling for urban form, residential preferences and socio-demographics. A central finding of this study is, that changes in the use of the car and rail-based travel are much more dependent on local scale, such as neighborhood type and residential preferences, whereas cycling is more affected by city-wide attributes, which we addressed as mobility culture elements.