The Influence of Education Level on Urban Travel Decision-making

Abstract

Personal choices can be changed by educating citizens. Education and learning are decisive factors in shaping the society and its spatial forms, where higher education level is an important proxy to assess the awareness level of people about current issues, such as sustainable transportation. Linking education and travel behaviour can inspire future urban policies to provide modal shift towards sustainable modes. The paper aimed to evaluate the influence of education level on mode choices for 45 cities from 29 countries. In general, education level was controlled by population density and GDP per capita, which are the parameters significantly influencing travel behavior. The main result has demonstrated that an increase in the higher education level is connected with dropping the modal share of driving in cities more than any change in other studied factors, while an increase in population density reduces driving more than an increase in GDP per capita. The results have been assessed and it was showed that higher education level considerably affects travel mode choice in cities. Thus, educating citizens is an important path to reduce car dependency.