“Why Don’t People Walk?!” – A Case Study of Active Travel at a Sustainable University

More and more people in the western world have a sedentary lifestyle that is likely to be damaging their health and active travel is a potential solution to this problem. This is because active travel involves activities like walking, running, or cycling for at least some of a person’s journey to work, school or play. It could also involve other modes of transport, however there still needs to be substantial part of the journey that requires physical activity.

This presentation is based on a case study in Nottingham Trent University (NTU) in the United Kingdom (UK); NTU is the #1 University in the UK’s University Green League. The work identifies the importance of understanding current behaviors, specifically those issues that act as barriers and those that can be harnessed as facilitators to change personal habits with the goal of achieving positive health, well-being and sustainability-focused outcomes.

The research is innovative as, in order to achieve the above outcomes, it combines the ‘Stages of Change’ model (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1986) with another respected theoretical models within the psychology of behavior change, namely the ‘Theory of Planned Behavior’ (Ajzen, 1991).  The key premise of the paper is that, having identified barriers and facilitators to lifestyle changes and embedded behavior that have significant health implications associated with them. Lessons learned can then be drawn upon to increase the effectiveness of specific well-being and sustainability initiatives for healthy communities.

This talk could be of interest to practitioners involved in initiatives that seek to change behavior through environmental health interventions in communities or in a wider sustainability context.