From university to work life - Jumping behind the wheel? Explaining mode change of students making the transition to professional life

This paper examines the mode use of students before and after starting their working lives and analyses the influencing factors. We aim to improve our understanding of travel behaviour change based on a theoretical framework extending the Theory of Planned Behaviour (ToPB), namely the Requirements, Opportunities, Abilities (ROA) approach, and the concept of habits and key events. The paper focuses on (i) how former university students adjust their travel behaviour when their working life starts and (ii) what are the most important factors explaining these changes. With a three-wave online panel, we show that indeed many graduate workers start commuting by car and fewer travel by public transport. To explain mode change, we identified classical factors from the ToPB (subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, attitudes) as well as several requirements (more flexibility, dress code), opportunities (changed car availability, parking situation, connection to public transport) and abilities (financial, commuting distance) and, moreover, habits. As a result, we could show influences resulting from changed attitudes, changes in personal requirements as well as changes in mode options. Habit consequently decreases the probability of mode change. We draw some policy implications from the results highlighting the importance of the provision of rail-bound public transport and giving recommendations on travel demand management.