Travel and cognitive dissonance
By J. De Vos, P. Singleton. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2020
101 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In this review paper, we reconceptualise the relationships between travel-related attitudes and behaviours using (and considering the applicability of) Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory. According to this psychological theory – developed in the 1950s and widely used ever since − a dissonance between attitudes and behaviour can result in feelings of discomfort, which people will try to reduce by changing either their attitudes or their behaviour. In our interpretation, we focus on two interrelated decision processes linked with travel behaviour, i.e., travel mode choice and residential location choice. Although a considerable number of travel behaviour studies refer to the cognitive dissonance theory in order to explain found results (e.g., changed attitudes), a full examination of the process of cognitive dissonance (reduction) in the travel behaviour literature is currently lacking. Through this critical consolidation of transport literature on the cognitive dissonance topic, we propose future research directions to fill this gap. We argue that the cognitive dissonance theory can provide valuable insights into satisfaction levels with travel and the place of residence, while also helping to explain changes in travel-related attitudes and choices of where to live and which travel mode to use.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Transportation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c195a2b0c601746bd9197771a443952df0d05ec6
How researchers see this paper
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In Economics and Econometrics
In Transportation
- J. De Vos
- K. Maat
- Bert van Wee
- Frank Witlox
- P. Singleton
- Tim Schwanen
- Veronique Van Acker
- Oliver Smith
Citations in the corpus
- Impacts of the built environment and travel behaviour on attitudes: Theories underpinning the reverse causality hypothesis (2019, background): “…attitude towards a certain travel mode will affect satisfaction levels when using that mode, but also that satisfaction levels with multiple trips using a certain mode influence the attitude towards that mode, especially when a favoured mode is experienced negatively, or vice versa (De Vos, 2019).”
- From attitude to satisfaction: introducing the travel mode choice cycle (2021, unknown): “Some travel behaviour studies have used the theory of cognitive dissonance to explain observed changes in travel attitudes (see, De Vos & Singleton, 2020, for an overview).”