The Reciprocal Relationship between Children and Young Adults' Travel Behavior and Their Travel Attitudes, Skills, and Norms

At a fundamental level, individuals require specific competencies to travel. These include skills, knowledge, attitudes, and norms, which together form the construct of travel “motility.” Though the effects of possessing these basic travel competencies on travel behavior have been studied to varying degrees in isolation, motility has not been well studied as a cohesive unit nor as an outcome of interest. In this dissertation, the author seeks to understand how individuals’ travel experiences build their motility. The author examines two longitudinal panels, with schoolchildren in Davis, CA and with undergraduate students attending the University of California, Davis, both focusing on bicycling motility. The researcher found that early bicycling behavior is associated with increased probability of possessing positive bicycling attitudes, a high level of bicycling skill, and perceptions of bicycling as a normal, acceptable mode of travel. In the author's third dissertation study, they investigate driving motility through a study of driver’s licensing delay. Licensure relates to motility directly and indirectly: getting a driver’s license directly increases motility, while not getting a driver’s license may indirectly lead to increases in motility for non-driving modes, since teenagers without driver’s licenses are likely to gain experiences bicycling, walking, or taking public transit. In recent decades, increasing numbers of American teenagers have chosen to delay or forego licensure; the author studies the factors that influence the decision to delay through a retrospective survey of students, staff, and faculty at the University of California, Davis. The author found that graduated driver’s licensing laws, walkable residential locations, and driver’s licensing attitudes (which vary by generation) are associated with the timing of driver’s licensing. Combined with the results of the author's other two studies, this suggests that the teenagers who choose to delay driver’s licensing may gain valuable, motility-building experiences with sustainable alternative modes of travel.