Exploring SME sustainable mobility practices and behavioural spillover effects

Within domestic transport, the current carbon budget delivery plan has overshot the Climate Change Committee's 6th budget by 224 megatons, equivalent to 10 times the reduction observed during the pandemic (22MtC) [1]. The CCC estimates 62% of emission reductions depend on behaviour change. However, transport behaviour is influenced by many complex, highly contextual and interacting factors that are difficult to change: infrastructure, habits, built environment, culture and social norms.

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs; businesses of less than 250 staff) are often embedded and inter-connected within the local context [2] and may therefore be able to tackle these challenges. Due to increasing supply chain reporting requirement, all businesses are facing incentives to reduce scope 3 emissions, including staff commutes. As increasing attention is placed on decarbonising SMEs, this thesis will explore their mobility practices and potential for change - including understanding the current SME sustainable mobility policy context, designing demand reduction and/or modal shift interventions, and evaluating their effects.

The first study uses interviews with decision makers responsible for implementing current mobility plans to understand what is currently in place and how these decisions are made. Questions include: What barriers and challenges do they experience, and in SMEs that have been successful, what facilitated this? Does the organisation's culture and risk preferences influence acceptability or implementation?

Organisations often do not consider commuting or customer travel as their responsibility - when and why is this true?

The second study recruits employees from SMEs from different segments (e.g. rural-urban, different sectors or sizes) for a Stated Preference survey. In this Discrete Choice Experiment, we explore employees' willingness to accept different mobility policies to estimate the value placed on different attributes such as perceived fairness, cost, co-benefits and perceived efficacy. At what rate are employees willing to trade these attributes off? And how does this vary between segments?

The third study explores the link between participatory approaches, policy support, employees' perceived effectiveness and intervention efficacy. Could the act of deliberating be used as a moment to disrupt the commute and encourage modal shift? In a field experiment, employees would be invited to a participatory workshop to encourage deliberative decision making and communal goal setting.

This intervention would leverage the group dynamics and embeddedness of an SME. Success is measured according to the Avoid-Shift-Improve framework i.e., number of trips converted to hybrid meetings, modal choice for business/commute/leisure, and policy acceptability respectively. Leisure modal choice would be used to evaluate contextual spillover effects - when a change in one behaviour (commute) influences other behaviours (leisure travel) often arising from changes in motivation or preferences from adopting new behaviours [3].

The final study explores different kinds of spillover effects. This study may explore contextual (influencing leisure travel), interpersonal (influencing family's travel behaviour), or other PEB spillover (influencing sustainable workplace behaviours). Spillover effects have been linked to group dynamics "facilitating a sense of efficacy" and support by a trusted character [4].

These variables may be enhanced in a SME. Some evidence suggests that changing 'easier' behaviours first facilitate more challenging changes [5,6], such as transport behaviour.

Together four studies will explore how mobility policies can be designed for, and implemented by, SMEs to reduce COe associated with staff commuting and facilitate the social transformation required to achieve Net Zero. The output of this thesis will be a series of documents to provide guidance for SMEs in implementing policies.