Disruption: unlocking low carbon travel

Funded by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Energy Programme, this three-year project aims to highlight the ways in which ‘disruption’ impacts on mobility decision-making, identifying opportunities to change mobility practices in ways that reduce carbon emissions. This exploration takes place at three levels: within ‘families’; within organisations, such as schools and businesses; and within government. The project team consists of academics from seven UK universities.

Researchers at the University of Brighton, Drs Lesley Murray and Karolina Doughty (School of Applied Social Science), are contributing to the project primarily through an ethnographic study of everyday mobility practices in Brighton. A parallel study on everyday mobility is being carried out in Lancaster by researchers at the University of Lancaster. This element of the study seeks to address gaps in knowledge by exploring the myriad factors that influence people’s mobility, through the lens of disruption in everyday life.

Drawing on a range of mobile, visual and online methods, the research focuses on mobility within families, including children’s mobility, and in doing so, will identify issues that have wider implications for the understanding of everyday mobilities from a social science perspective.

Project timeframe

This research project commenced in September 2011 and ended in July 2015.

Project aims

The aim of the project is to:

  • create opportunities for change that will reduce the energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector
  • analyse how travel practices are formed and directed by underlying societal factors, assess to what extent people’s travel behaviour is fixed and routine, and identify ways to reduce barriers to positive change
  • discover how deliberative processes can effect change in mobility practices through bringing together different social actors, both 'lay' and 'expert', in a number of forums. Participants will be given the opportunity to 'deliberate' the different issues that emerge throughout the research, and challenge each other about how to capture the opportunities for change
  • use insights to help reveal the kinds of changes, to transport and other policy sectors such as health, education and business that are needed to inspire and facilitate a shift to lower carbon travel.
  • establish mechanisms for embedding changes in everyday life, in organisational practices and in social policy, so that a substantial contribution to reducing carbon emissions is achieved.

Project findings and impact

Findings and impact will be documented at the end of the project. It is hoped that the project will reveal how disruption affects the real choices people make and teach us about the opportunities to change travel practices at individual levels and within families; in organisations that generate travel demand and impact on our individual travel decision-making; and within government here policy that determines our travel opportunities is made. 

Research team

Dr Lesley Murray

Dr Karolina Doughty

Output

Doughty, K, & Murray, L (2014) Discourses of Mobility: Institutions, Everyday Lives and Embodiment. Mobilities, 1-20.

Disruption project website
 Disruption project: Facebook
Disruption project: Twitter

Partners

Professor Jillian Anable, Aberdeen University

Professor Iain Docherty, Glasgow University

Professor James Faulconbridge, University of Lancaster

Professor Greg Marsden (Principal Investigator), University of Leeds

Dr Helen Roby, Open University

Dr Tim Chatterton, the University of West of England