Stockholmarnas resvanor - mellan trängselskatt och klimatdebatt

have children, where e.g. congestion changes or a new public transport line
can determine whether they buy a car.
Discussion and conclusions
These studies showed that travel habits are resistant to change because they
are anchored as self-evident features of everyday life. Habits absorb the
shock of e.g. an increase in fuel prices or some other change in living conditions.
Habits can be regarded as a buffer between experience and action
in general. By dampening the leap between experience and response, habits
contribute to what theorists usually regard as a benefit – the possibility of
reducing planning and mental effort. Theory and empiricism indicate that
habits can be replaced by other habits, but that they can rarely be reduced
to a marginal feature of human life. When habits are discussed in an environmental
context they are often cited as an obstacle to change, which
appears to be true, at least in the short term. However it is often overlooked
that habits (and lifestyles) also create opportunities and conditions
for long-term solutions to environmental problems. Sustainable development
is not a question of breaking habits, but of gradually replacing and
retaining them.
The simple definition of a habit as a repeated action serves to classify
most trips as habitual travel, since they are repeated by the individual. For
a person making a trip for an occasional reason, that trip is not a habit.
However many others may habitually make a similar trip. This means that
occasional travel is socially and culturally affected by (other’s) habits and
that occasional trips can be subdivided according to how much they are
modelled or affected by travel habits in the social context. It is necessary
to identify both occasional and habitual trips if they are problematic from
an environmental perspective. It is also necessary to know the proportion
of travel that comprises occasional trips, and even these might need to be
subdivided. It is thus wrong to discuss or observe habitual trips alone.
Habits in general are related to travel habits. Participating in nightlife,
fishing trips or a choir, having a night in or going to work, the country,
the supermarket, etc. are examples of activities around which many people
build habits. While leisure activities thus often determine people’s travel
habits, travel habits partly control leisure activities, e.g. when a city dweller
does activities that can be done ‘en route’.
The researcher must aim to define these relevant contexts and habits and
what they mean for everyday life, by examining the structures forming the
habits and what the habits give structure to in turn.
182 Summary