Title: Modelling the relationships between transport poverty and social disadvantage
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Transport and mobility are widely recognised as fundamental in the facilitation of people's everyday lives. The last decade has witnessed increasing academic and policy interest in the growing problem of 'transport poverty' within car dominant societies such as the UK, as well as increasingly within development contexts. Research into inequalities in the social distributions of transport and travel behaviours dates back to the early 1970s. A 2003 report by the UK Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) served to reinvigorate these debates, initailly in the UK, and more recently within the international literatures. Importantly, the SEU report makes evident the direct causal links between a lack of transport and the economic and social disadvantage experienced by individuals and communities, as well as the consequences of a lack of mibility for other important areas of social policies, such as a employment, health, education, housing and land use. While the case for including consideration of social equity is increasingly accepted within transport policy circles, it is clear that the appropriate response in terms of its practical delivery is not well understood. There are three main reasons for this: i) existing theories of social disadvantage are not well integrated within the transport context and neither have newly emergent social and geographical theories of transport and mobility inequalities been adequately integrated; ii) much of the empirical research in the area of transport disadvantage has been qualitative in nature and so does not identify the extent or severity of the problem for the UK population as a whole, iii) the quantitative analyses of transport-related social exclusion that do exist fail to adequately capture the multi-layered and dynamic nature of the transport problems that the people who are experiencing social exclusion themselves identify. The proposed programme of research aims to address these gaps in current state-of-the-art knowledge. It will initially return to the key theories which explain social disadvantage and use these to develop an integrated theoretical framework of the multiple causal factors underlying transport poverty. It will develop indicators to operationalise this conceptual framework and populate these with quantitative and measurable data. Initially, various analyses will be undertaken using a number of existing national and local datasets. The main aim at this stage is to familiarise the applicant with the various standard modelling techniques that are regularly used to understand travel behaviour. A sample interview-based survey will then be undertaken in Merseyside with a sub-sample of respondents of their bi-annual countywide household travel survey. A total sample of 200 households and approximately 400 adults within these households is envisaged. The survey will provide a unique geo-coded combined dataset of the travel behaviours, transport expenditure, attitudes to transport, cognitions of the local transport system, perceptions of its appropriateness in meeting their activity needs, their perceived need and willingness to travel of these respondents. The data will be used to model the relationships between transport poverty and social disadvantage in the context of the 'real life setting' where it will be possible to control for land use, activity opportunities, public transport provision levels and other locally specific factors which influence people's travel behaviours in a way that is not possible with the existing datasets that are available. The results of this research will be widely communicated to academics and the decision-makers who have an influence on transport provision in the UK and beyond.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE