Thanks for your observations.Nearholmer wrote: ↑16 Mar 2024, 4:54pm Yes, location, location, location, or perhaps facilities, facilities, facilities. It makes a huge difference to all this, because the better the facilities, the less strong other motivations need to be.
I’d also love to see some really good psychological research into why people don’t cycle. I mean something that gets beyond the “standard excuses/reasons” (safety in traffic; the weather; hills) and looks for deeper perceptions, what cycling symbolises to people, because I have an inkling that some of not-cycling has roots in self-perception vs perception of cycling/cyclists.
Anyway, good luck with it.
There's some research into how the image of the cyclist and cycling influence the propensity to cycle. According to one study (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2006.09.002), 38% of people who never contemplated cycling for transport said they think it'd be uncharacteristic of them to cycle. This is possibly because in car-dominant societies, the cyclist is seen as a lawless, immature, and dangerous creature (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2010.08.004). Cycling is also seen by black people as "something that white people do" which may act as a barrier (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2023.103576). It was also found that people who feel that they are unable to reduce car use (i.e., car dependent) are less likely to cycle (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2022.05.025).
