Understanding the acceptance towards sustainable commuting in Munich, Germany

As cities becoming the centre of global problems, urban mobility and accessibility are becoming more and more prominent in urban areas. The demand for affordable and convenient modes of transport has resulted in an increase in emissions from the transport sector worldwide, including Germany, even though the total volume of emissions has been declining over the past few years. An important contributory factor here is commuter traffic, which is responsible for a major share of traffic emissions in Germany. As the city of Munich aims to achieve emission neutrality by 2050, a change in the behaviour of the population is inevitable. And although there is indeed externally induced behaviour change, an intrinsic and self-chosen behaviour change requires accepting the significance of environmental and resource friendly transportation for commuting. To guarantee genuine change and strive for sustainable urban mobility in the long term, public acceptance towards the importance of sustainable modes of transportation is indispensable, as it represents an intermediate step between information and action.

This thesis therefore intends to examine this acceptance towards sustainable modes of transport for commuting in more detail by first determining influencing factors that emerge from the literature as relevant. These include awareness factors such as benefit and problem awareness as well as information and education about sustainable modes of transport, but also perception factors such as the symbolic status of a car and the safety and cost perception of sustainable modes of transport. In order to avoid a distortion through unequal distribution of the data in relation to socio-demographic factors, these were included as control variables. Subsequently, these factors were related to each other using a variety of statistical techniques, in particular the multiple linear regression model. Not only was the relationship between dependent and independent variables measured, but also the size, significance and direction of the influence. The statistical analysis showed that the personal characteristics of the commuters appear to play a subordinate role. According to the calculations, benefit and problem awareness as well as safety and cost perception of sustainable modes of transport compared to conventional motorised individual transport have a significant influence on the level of acceptance. Surprisingly, the variable of information and education about sustainable transport seemed to show no connection to the measured level of acceptance. The same applies to the status of the car in society as an object of prestige. The most striking aspect of the results was that the awareness factors have a positive influence on acceptance, while the perception factors have a negative influence. Roughly speaking, this means that with increasing awareness the level of acceptance increases, while with increasing perception the level of acceptance decreases.

However, this work does not provide any insight into the emergence of awareness and perception. Neither how these indicators are formed, nor their composition is revealed by this research. Furthermore, it would be of interest to investigate the influence of this measured acceptance on actual mobility behaviour. In the long term, in addition to increasing the efficiency of transport, it is above all necessary to achieve a change in the behaviour of the population. The extent to which formation and support for acceptance can help in this can be investigated in a separate study. However, promoting acceptance through policies and communication work is always advisable and can help the city of Munich to reach emission neutrality by 2050.