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What Affects Millennials' Mobility? PART I What Affects Millennials’ Mobility? PART I: Investigating the Environmental Concerns, Lifestyles, Mobility-Related Attitudes and Adoption of Technology of Young Adults in California May A Research Report from the National Center 2016 for Sustainable Transportation Dr. Giovanni Circella, University of California, Davis Dr. Lew Fulton, University of California, Davis Farzad Alemi, University of California, Davis Rosaria M. Berliner, University of California, Davis Kate Tiedeman, University of California, Davis Prof. Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Georgia Institute of Technology Prof. Susan Handy, University of California, Davis About the National Center for Sustainable Transportation The National Center for Sustainable Transportation is a consortium of leading universities committed to advancing an environmentally sustainable transportation system through cutting- edge research, direct policy engagement, and education of our future leaders. Consortium members include: University of California, Davis; University of California, Riverside; University of Southern California; California State University, Long Beach; Georgia Institute of Technology; and University of Vermont. More information can be found at: ncst.ucdavis.edu. Disclaimer The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the information presented herein. This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the United States Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Centers program, in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government and the State of California assumes no liability for the contents or use thereof. Nor does the content necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the U.S. Government and the State of California. This report does not constitute a standard, specification, or regulation. Acknowledgments This study was funded by a grant from the National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST), supported by USDOT and Caltrans through the University Transportation Centers program. The authors would like to thank the NCST, USDOT, and Caltrans for their support of university-based research in transportation, and especially for the funding provided in support of this project. Additional funding for this project was provided by the UC Davis Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways (STEPS) program. The authors are grateful for this support. All errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors, and not the funding organizations. The authors would like to sincerely thank Daniel Sperling, Ram Pendyala, Kay Axhausen, Joan Walker, Elisabetta Cherchi, Cinzia Cirillo, Kari Watkins, Scott Le Vine, Eric Gudz, Aliaksandr Malokin, Yongsung Lee, Gouri Mishra, Calvin Thigpen, Alvaro Rodriguez Valencia, Simon Berrebi, Alice Grossman, Sarah Ligday, Rubem Mondaini, Aniss Bahreinian (California Energy Commission), Katie Benouar, Melissa Thompson, Dillon Miner, Nicole Longoria and David Chursenoff (Caltrans), John Orr, Elisabeth Sanford and Guy Rousseau (Atlanta Regional Commission), David Ory (Metropolitan Transportation Commission), Mike Alba (LinkedIn Corp.), Ken Laberteaux (Toyota Motor Corp.), and Natalia Tinjaca Mora (Camara de Comercio Bogota, Colombia) for their thoughtful comments and useful suggestions during the design of the online survey and data collection process. What Affects Millennials’ Mobility? PART I: Investigating the Environmental Concerns, Lifestyles, Mobility-Related Attitudes and Adoption of Technology of Young Adults in California A National Center for Sustainable Transportation Research Report May 2016 Giovanni Circella*, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Lew Fulton**, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Farzad Alemi, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Rosaria M. Berliner, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Kate Tiedeman, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Patricia L. Mokhtarian, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Susan Handy, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis *Principal Investigator, **Co-Principal Investigator i [page left intentionally blank] ii TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................................... iv Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Literature review ............................................................................................................................. 6 The mobility of millennials .......................................................................................................... 8 Shared Mobility and New Mobility Services ............................................................................. 20 Research Methods ........................................................................................................................ 24 Methodology, Scope and Main focus of the study ................................................................... 26 Research Questions .................................................................................................................. 28 Behavioral Framework and Groups of Variables Controlled for in the Survey ........................ 29 Sampling Method ...................................................................................................................... 35 Survey Design and Data Collection ............................................................................................... 40 Involvement of relevant stakeholders in the survey design .................................................... 40 Final Survey Structure ............................................................................................................... 41 Quality Assurance and Use of Trap Questions ......................................................................... 54 Online Platform and Additional Technical Details .................................................................... 55 Survey Launch and Data Collection .......................................................................................... 57 Results ........................................................................................................................................... 60 Data Cleaning and Filtering Out of Cases ................................................................................. 61 Final Dataset ............................................................................................................................. 63 Mobility Choices of Millennials vs. Members of Gen X ............................................................ 72 Conclusions and Next Steps of the Research ................................................................................ 94 References .................................................................................................................................... 99 List of Acronyms Used in the Document .................................................................................... 104 Appendix A .................................................................................................................................. 105 iii What Affects Millennials’ Mobility? PART I: Investigating the Environmental Concerns, Lifestyles, Mobility-Related Attitudes and Adoption of Technology of Young Adults in California EXECUTIVE SUMMARY How do “millennials” make their mobility choices? What factors (e.g. lifestyles and personal preferences) affect their mobility-related choices? What are their future aspirations to purchase and use a vehicle vs. to use other means of transportation? How will millennials’ behaviors shape future transportation demand and affect planning needs in the 21st Century? Young adults (often referred to as “millennials” or “Generation Y”) are increasingly reported to have different lifestyles and travel behavior from previous generations at the same stage in life. Among the observed changes, younger travelers tend to postpone the time they obtain a driver’s license, often choose to live in more central urban locations and choose not to own a car, drive less even if they own one, and use alternative non-motorized means of transportation more often. Several possible explanations have been proposed to explain the observed behaviors of young adults, including their preference for more urban locations closer to the vibrant parts of a city, changes in household composition (e.g. delayed marriage and childbearing), and the substitution of travel for work and socializing with telecommuting and social media. However, the debate in this field is still dominated by speculations about the potential factors affecting millennials’ behavior, and the previous studies that started to investigate millennials’ travel-related decisions have been generally limited by the lack of adequate data. The connected tech-savvy millennials are a very popular figure in the media headlines, and they certainly are a common presence in San Francisco, New York City, or any other major city in the country. Not all millennials fit this stereotype, though, and there are large masses of young adults that behave in a way that is more similar to older cohorts. They are more likely
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