A New Psychological Approach to Reducing Individuals’ Car Use Behavior Applying Coping Planning and Analyzing Its Effects

抄録

Mobility Management is quite common and important methodology for transportation policy. In mobility management for sustainable urban transport, the technique of action plans has been applied to help commuters translate their intention into actual travel behavior. However, less is known about the influence of the factor, coping planning, psychologically involving both “anticipation of barriers” and “strategy for overcoming barriers” even though it has been regarded as a key role in behavior change in the fields of health psychology and behavioral medicine. Therefore, the purpose of this research was two-fold: (1) to examine the roles of not merely action planning but coping planning as the proximal psychological determinants of car use behavior and pro-environmental mode use behavior, and (2) to assess the effects of requesting commuters to form personalized action plans and coping plans, respectively, on action planning and coping planning. We conducted an internet survey to 232 respondents with a car available who live in Taipei City, Taiwan. The respondents were assigned into one of three groups with action plan intervention, with action plus coping plan intervention, and without intervention. The results indicate that (1) coping planning mediates between intention and behavior, as well as between action planning and behavior; (2) owing to existing the interaction effect, the influence of action planning on behavior will be amplified if coping planning as a moderator is high; (3) forming personalized coping plans has an instant effect in promoting coping planning. Based on these findings, soft transport policy should include coping planning and related interventions for more effectively reducing car use.