The role of automobility engagement for car use and car use reduction intentions in Germany

Currently, the car holds the position as the primary mode of transportation in Germany and many other countries, serving diverse purposes. This widespread reliance has resulted in negative impacts on individuals, societies, as well as the environment and the climate. Reducing car use would therefore come with considerable benefits. While the role of many socio-economic, structural and psychological factors in car use reduction is well established, the socio-cultural context of automobility is not well conceptualised and integrated into quantitative studies. The goal of this paper was to explore the role of the socio-cultural context of automobility, differentiating between past and future car use. To this end, we applied Automobility Engagement (AE) as a concept operationalising consumer interactions with cars within the automobility system. In regression models predicting past car use (i.e., one week of actual travel behaviour) and the intention to reduce car use in the future, we tested the explanatory power of AE’s seven facets in addition to selected socio-economic, structural and psychological factors. We recruited a sample of more than 2,000 participants in the German federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the summer of 2023. Results showed that the AE facets perceived car dependence, concern about the negative environmental effects of car use, house ownership preferences and car identity made small but significant contributions to our models whilst the three remaining AE facets did not. We found stronger associations with several socio-economic, structural and psychological variables such as owning a car, degree of urbanisation and transportation habits. We discuss the relevance of AE as an operationalisation of the socio-cultural context of automobility, its relatedness to other psychological factors and derive implications for policy design.