Everyday life behavior and the environment [electronic resource] : the role of self-interest, conditions, and learning in personal transportation choices

Engaging individuals in behaviors that align with environmental and community well-being is critical to addressing today's pressing sustainability challenges. This dissertation—which is comprised of three related studies—examines personal transportation choices, as a case of everyday life behavior with a large aggregate impact on the environment and society. The studies were conducted in varied settings in the San Francisco Bay Area: a teacher institute on science and sustainability; a workplace-based commute alternative program; and 14 listening sessions organized in coordination with community partners throughout the region. Through narrative interviews, field observation, participant documentation of transportation behavior, and document analysis, primarily qualitative data were gathered and analyzed to explore what and how conditions influence whether individuals engage in sustainable transportation, or alternatives to traveling in single occupancy vehicles. Nuances of everyday life were found, highlighting the convergence of conditions with daily demands, human needs, past experience, perceptions and learning in influencing behavior and choices. The three studies collectively reveal how different social, cultural, physical, and conceptual conditions can be supportive and also can act as barriers to sustainable transportation behavior. Specific perceptions and attitudes; types of knowledge and competence; and types of satisfaction were found to mediate the influence of different types of conditions on transportation mode choices. To a certain extent, participants chose a transportation mode that they felt most effectively fulfilled their self-interest in managing daily life, meeting their needs for efficiency, convenience, dependability, comfort, and safety. Individuals who regularly engaged in sustainable transportation behaviors did not feel they had sacrificed practical needs or types of satisfaction to travel in this way. Furthermore, these individuals often derived satisfaction and met needs beyond those at the practical level, thus enhancing their life through benefits such as experiencing improved health, connecting with others or their community, experiencing joy, or feeling a sense of contributing to something beyond themselves through their choice of transportation behavior. For many individuals and communities, however, barriers in the form of varied conditions made it challenging for sustainable transportation to meet mostly practical needs of everyday life. Overall, the findings suggest the importance of conditions that appeal to motivations other than those that are directly environmental and that bring together individual self-interest with environmental behavior. The conclusion discusses implications for how programs, organizations, and collaboratives can support pro-environmental behavior through providing learning opportunities and altering other behavior-specific conditions.

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Ardoin Nicole M. (Nicole Michele) primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Barron Brigid primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Atkin J. Myron advisor. Thesis advisor
Soule Sarah Anne