KARIN SANDQVIST
SUZANNE KRISTRÖM
Getting along without a family car
The role of an automobile in adolescents’
experiences and attitudes
Part 1. Inner city Stockholm
Individ, omvärld och lärande/Forskning nr 3
Karin Sandqvist Suzanne Kriström
Getting along without a family car
The role of an automobile
in adolescents’ experiences and attitudes
Part 1. Inner city Stockholm
Individ, omvärld och lärande/Forskning nr 3
Institutionen för individ, omvärld och lärande
Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm (2001)
Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
IOL/Forskning nr 3
Individ, omvärld och lärande/Forskning nr 3
utgiven av
Institutionen för individ, omvärld och lärande
Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm (2001)
Box 47 308
100 74 Stockholm
Tel. 08-737 55 00
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Karin Sandqvist and Suzanne Kriström: Getting along without a family
car. The role of the automobile in adolescents' experiences and attitudes
Part 1. Inner city Stockholm
Abstract (Aim, Method, Results)
Aim: to investigate the importance of a family car for adolescents’ travel
patterns, activities and related attitudes, in inner-city Stockholm. This is a high
status area with a low level of car-ownership.
Method: 57 families with 71 adolescents participated, of which half were carless. An interview covered the adolescents’ mobility, daily, weekly and on
long journeys. A questionnaire, which also was answered by the parents, covered attitudes toward car-dependency, environmental problems, and adolescents' independent mobility.
Results: The adolescents engaged in a wide variety of leisure activities and
enjoyed an extensive independent mobility during their daily and weekly
activities. Even if a family owned a car, adolescents were rarely dependent on
this for leisure activities and visiting relatives.
Car-ownership made no difference for participating in activities, independent mobility, or visiting relatives. Surprisingly, neither did it make a difference
in the number of long journeys by car. For this, parental attitudes toward carvacations made a difference. Car-less adolescents made fewer long journeys
by air, and more by train.
Car-owning parents generally held more pro-car attitudes than car-less
parents and children, particularly in regard to cars and quality of life. Adolescents in car-owning families were more critical toward cars than their parents
were. If they keep their views, they will own cars to a lesser extent. Their carless peers were even more critical to cars, and they particularly endorsed a carfree life-style for children.
Key words: Adolescents Mobility Leisure travel Inner-city Travel
modes
Sammanfattning
Syfte: Att undersöka vad bil i familjen betyder för tonåringars resmönster,
aktiviteter och attityder, i Stockholms innerstad.
Metod: 57 familjer med 71 tonåringar deltog, varav hälften var billösa. En
intervju behandlade tonåringarnas rörelsemönster, per dag och vecka, och på
långresor. En enkät, som även besvarades av föräldrar, behandlade attityder till
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bilberoende, allmänt och i barnfamiljer, miljöproblem, samt tonåringars självständiga rörlighet.
Resultat: Tonåringarna deltog i ett vitt spektrum av fritidsaktiviteter och åtnjöt
vidsträckt självständig rörlighet för aktiviteter på vardagar och veckohelger.
Även om familjen hade bil, var tonåringarna sällan beroende av detta för sina
aktiviteter eller släktbesök.
Familjens biltillgång hade ingen betydelse för antalet fritidsaktiviteter, för
tonåringarnas grad av självständig rörlighet, eller hur ofta de träffade släktingar.
Billösa tonåringar gjorde också lika många långresor med bil som övriga, men
färre resor med flyg och fler med tåg. Föräldrarnas attityd till bilsemestrar hade
stor betydelse för antalet långresor med bil.
Bilägande föräldrar hade mer bilvänliga attityder än billösa föräldrar, och
särskilt när det gällde bilen och livskvaliteten. Tonåringar i bilfamiljer var mer
bilkritiska än sina föräldrar. Om de behåller sin inställning kommer de att ha bil
i mindre utsträckning. Deras billösa jämnåriga var ännu mer bilkritiska, och var
särskilt positiva till att barn växer upp utan bil.
Nyckelord: Tonåringar Rörlighet Fritidsresor Innerstaden Färdmedelsval
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Contents
1. TRANSPORT ISSUES AND CHILDREN: SOME THEORETICAL
CONSIDERATIONS
1.1 Introduction 9
1.2 The ecology of human development 10
1.3 Some research findings regarding uses of and attitudes to cars 13
2. PURPOSE AND DESIGN 17
2.1 The purpose and the data collection strategy 17
2. 2 Residential settings and car-ownership 18
2. 3. Sample composition 19
2. 4 The major research questions 21
3. METHODS 22
3.1 Recruiting the sample 22
3.2 The interview 24
3.3 The questionnaire 26
3.4 Data analysis 28
4. PARENTS' AND CHILDRENS' ATTITUDES 29
4.1 The coding of the questionnaire 29
4.2. “Cars in general“ 29
4.3. “Automobiles and the environment“ 33
4.4 “Traffic policy and planning issues“ 35
4.5 “The car in families with children“ 39
4.6 “Families with children in different types of settings“ 41
4.7. “Younger teenagers on their own“ 44
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4.8 Variations in attitudes: the method of analysis 46
4.9 Variations in parental attitudes 52
4.10 Variations in children’s attitudes 54
4.11 Correlations between parents' and their children's attitudes 56
4.12 Discussion and conclusions 59
5.1 Qualitative and quantitative data 61
5.2 Getting to school 61
5.3 Leisure activities 63
5.4 Independence in activities and week-ends 67
5.5 Contact with relatives 70
5.5 Independent travel to relatives 75
5.6 Travel mode variation 77
5.7 Long trips 78
6. FAMILY CAR(S), PARENTS' ATTITUDES AND CHILDREN'S
EXPERIENCES 84
6.1 The multivariate analysis 84
6.2 Children's organised leisure time activities 86
6.3 Children's independent mobility experiences 88
6.4 Children's experiences of travel modes on long trips 93
6.4.1 Variables and method of analysis 93
6.4.2 Trips by car 96
6.4.3 Trips by air 96
6.4.4 Trips by train 97
6.4.5 Discussion 98
6.5 Children's contact with relatives 99
6.5.1 Frequency of contact with kin 99
6.5.2 Distance to kin households 102
6.6 Environmental attitudes 108
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6.7 Summary and conclusion 108
7. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 110
7.1 Adolescents and relationship with parents 110
7.2 What if the adolescents keep their views into the future? 111
7.3 The impact of car-ownership for the children's experiences 112
7.4 The impact of parents' attitudes 113
7.5 Cars for enhancing the quality of life and “Car affection“ 114
7.6 The impact of neighborhood for the children's experiences 115
7.7 Questions for further research 116
8. REFERENCES 117
Appendix Questionnaire form 119
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Acknowledgments
The here presented research report is the first in a planned series of three
studies, in different settings, constituting the project “Growing up with and
without a family car“.
The present study, concerning adolescents and their parents in the inner
city of Stockholm, was financially supported by the Swedish Transport and
Communications Research Board (Kommunikationsforskningsberedningen, KFB). As the study was the first in the series, this part included the
time-consuming preparatory work of constructing the data-collection instruments (questionnaire and interview). We particularly like to thank Per
Norman and Arne Kihlblom for their encouragement at various stages.
The report “Getting along without a family car. The role of an automobile in adolescents' experiences and attitudes“ has been published by the
Swedish Transport and Communications Board in pdf format with series
number KFB 2000:65. The here presented version published by the Department of Human Development and Special Education at Stockholm Institute of Education differs mainly in layout. In addition, a fair number of
corrections have been performed, mainly in language but also in the tables.
We also thank our colleagues at the Department for Human Development and Special Education (Institutionen för individ, omvärld och lärande) for their contributions, particularly in trying out the queistionnaire, and
most particularly Åsa Murray, Anders Skarlind and Tilda Maria Forselius.
Most of all, we want to express our gratitude to all the adolescents and
their parents who are the main contributors to the study. We sincerely appreciate their willingness to tell us about their opinions and experiences.
Stockholm, January 2001
Karin Sandqvist Suzanne Kriström
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1. Transport issues and children:
Some theoretical considerations
1.1 Introduction
In industrialised countries, the 20th century has been characterized by an ever
increasing reliance on automobiles, for both everyday needs and leisure
activities. For children, this has meant many changes, like more traffic in
neighborhoods and increased dependency on adults for everyday mobility.
For the ages from around 12 years, this dependency is new in human history.
Before car transport became a dominant travel mode, adolescents were quite
equal to adults in mobility, allowing for gradually increasing independent
action in their neighborhood and beyond. Often adolescents' mobility enabled
them to make contributions to their families by running errands and to maintain a social network on par with their parents.
Today, the Swedish political rhetoric regarding transportation regularly invokes families with children. It is argued as self-evident that they must have a
car, for everyday routines and for visiting relatives, and will suffer unduly if
petrol or car-ownership taxes are raised. Implicitly, children need a family
car, or even two, to grow up normally.
What impact do(es) the family car(s) really have in the lives of children?
Some families, in Sweden particularly single mothers, do not have a car.
Does an absence of a family car mean a paucity of enriching experiences? Or
does it mean more independence training? Do the habits generated by the
family car also shape parents' views on children's independence, making them
more restrictive in regard to adolescents' self-directed mobility?
At the same time as the family car(s) widely is considered a necessity, the
sustainability of present day car use is seriously questioned. For young people
in particular, a long-term environmental perspective is appropriate. Not until
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around year 2050 will today's adolescents reach retirement age. To what
extent are environmental considerations a factor in the lives of today's adolescents?
The present study is aimed towards investigating both what is on the minds
of adolescents and their parents regarding car-use, and what are adolescents'
actual experiences in regard to mobility. The point of departure is the intersection of the two sharply contrasting images of cars – a boon to modern
humanity and a threat to future generations.
This report describes the results of the first stages of the study, conducted
in inner city Stockholm. In subsequent stages, suburban families and families
in a small town will be in focus.
1.2 The ecology of human development
The general theoretical framework of the present study adheres to Urie
Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory of human development, most extensively
outlined in his 1979 book on “The Ecology of Human Development“. In this
approach to the psychology of individual development, a key feature is the
stress on the interdependency of the levels of society of which the developing person is a part. Development occurs in context; for young children the
most immediate and proximate context is usually the family (microsystem);
the family is embedded in a context of personal network of neighbors,
friends, relatives and relationships at work (mesosystem and exosystem); the
meso- and exosystems are embedded in a national, or even global, context
(macrosystem) where particular cultural traits, laws and regulations, and
also historic events (wars, economic cycles, technical development) inevitably draw a blueprint for opportunities and possibilities.
It should perhaps be noted that the term “ecology“ in Bronfenbrenner's
developmental perspective primarily refers to the interdependencies of hu10
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man societies, rather than to the interdependencies of biological systems,
which today is a more frequent meaning of the term. Yet certainly there is
no absolute dividing line between the two meanings, particularly since the
carrying capacity of the biosphere for sustaining life provides the ultimate
macrosystem for human existence.
While the dominant microsystem for a young child is its family, for older
children and adolescents, other very important microsystems are the school
and peer groups, as well as the neighborhood in general and the extended
family. The characteristic aspect of a microsystem is the fact of direct contact between the developing person and the people and objects of the microsystem setting. The microsystem provides the proximate means for development and psychological growth, through the roles and relations to other
persons, and through the activities that the microsystem demand or permit.
Roles, relations and activities are the basic means by which the individual's
development progresses, and it is the characteristics of these, which give
direction, hinder or promote development.
Transport systems cut across all the contextual levels around the developing persons, i. e. microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem.
At the microsystem level, we can as an example consider the difference
between two situations: First, where an adolescent is chauffeured by his/her
parent to an after-school activity, and second, where the same adolescent
takes the subway. In the first, the teenager's role is being a dependent child,
without responsibility and under parental surveillance. In the second, the
teenager's role is being an adult citizen, with same obligation to show a
ticket and wait in line, in need of the same competence to find the right platform and get on to the right train, pay attention to the stops and get of at the
right one, and finally to find the way from the subway to the right address.
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Clearly, the second situation has a higher developmental potential, as it
promotes adult functioning.
To the extent that the family car provides a framework and opportunities
for family life, it is obviously also an important resource for new experiences and family togetherness. Yet another aspect of transport systems in
relation to the microsystem is neighborhood traffic. More or less motor traffic in the neighborhood, and more or less public transport facilities, are important aspects of the microsystem, which influences the developing person
directly.
The mesosystem is the system of linkages between the microsystems in
which the developing person participates. Transport, by definition, provides
the physical linkages between home, school, places for leisure activities and
vacations, and the households of friends and relatives, whether the transport
mode is walking, cycling, automobile, street-car, train or airplane. Visiting
relatives is an important part of family life, and contact with one's roots is
important for identity formation.
If teenagers can maintain contact with their extended family, or kin, this
might be important for many reasons. Adolescents often have a strained or
conflicted relationship with their parents. A grandmother, aunt or older
brother can provide relief, being another trusted adult to turn to, and perhaps
provide a bridge back to the parents if necessary. Parents are developing
persons too, with their own needs, and can not be expected to always function up to par as parents. Adult problems, divorces and stepparents can create turbulent family situations. Relatives can provide a safety net in difficult
times. If the children can get to them by themselves, without having to ask
the parent for a ride, right at the time when they need a break from this particular conflicted relationship, the whole family is likely to function better,
and the chances for benevolent developmental trajectories are improved.
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Transport issues can also be considered at the macrosystem level. For
young persons, travelling far from home gives an immediate sense of the
larger society, at a national or even global level. In this context, the destination is important, but so is the travel mode, particularly when long-term
environmental sustainability is an issue. Transport at the macrosystem level
is also important to consider in people's minds; for example, do they harbor
an image of automobiles as a boon to modern humanity, or as a threat to the
future environment?
Besides the actual, direct experiences of roles, relations and activities
which are important for furthering a person's development, in Bronfenbrenner's human ecology perspective, also the developing person's interpretations and world views are important. To a considerable extent, people create
their own environment, particularly at the microsystem level, and the interpretations and meanings they give to the world around them have real consequences. For children, obviously both their own views and those of their
parents are important.
For the present study, the views of the adolescents and their parents were
investigated at an equal basis, via questionnaires, while the experiences of
the adolescents were investigated by interviews. The contents and details are
specified in the chapter on methods.
1.3 Some research findings regarding uses of and attitudes
to cars
This is not the place for a general review of transport research, but a few
notes on the most relevant findings are needed.
In regard to the concerns of young people, it seems as if the awareness of
the potential seriousness of environmental degradation is high in many
countries (Sandqvist & Jonsson, 1997). However, when alternatives to the
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use of cars are considered, there are some conflicting results. Anderson,
Fürth and Holmberg (1993) maintain that the generation born in the 70's are
as keen on mobility by car as their parents, while qualitative studies of
young adults in Göteborg (a major Swedish city) have revealed quite critical attitudes to their parents' extensive car usage (Andréasson & Sjöberg,
1996; Sjöberg, 2000). Similarly, qualitative investigations in Stockholm of
young people's viewpoints show a high support of public transport, particularly on rail, and a critical standpoint towards cars and expanding the
road network (Regionplane- och trafikkontoret, 1997; 1999).
At the same time as concern with environmental issues seems high, studies have shown that the relation between life styles, concern for the environment and behavior by no means is clear (Berge, 1996; Hjorthol & Berge,
1997; Lundgren, 1999). One explanation to this is the existence of rationalizations of more or less conscious, emotional motivations, particularly in
regard to car use (Hagman, 1998; Tengström, 1991; Slotegraf, Steg & Vlek,
1997). Indeed, Nilsson & Küller (2000), find “car affection“ to be an attitude dimension which explains a great deal of travel behavior and acceptance of restriction on car traffic (higher car affection means lower acceptance of restrictions).
There are also conflicting views on the necessity and feasibility of reducing car traffic. Some authors regard the environmental problems created
by cars to be so serious that car traffic must be reduced even if drastic measures must be imposed (Steen, 1997; OECD, 1995; Wackernagel & Rees,
1996; Whitelegg, 1993). When air travel is considered, the same principle
applies (Steen, 1997; Carlsson-Kanyama, 1999). Others seem to conclude
that reducing car travel is not an option, because this will encounter too
much public resistance (Ingvarsson, 2000; Jamison, 1998).
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However, the relationship between need and demand for travel is by no
means clear (Owen, 1996), and furthermore, it seems as if planners and
politicians often underestimate the public acceptance of restricting car traffic (KFB, 1994). Particularly seem car restrictions in the form of increased
pedestrian areas to be widely accepted, whereas restrictions in the form of
user monetary costs (e. g. road tolls or higher petrol taxes) are not (Nilsson
& Küller, 2000).
Other issues raised by the present study relate to long trips and visiting
relatives. Relatives, or with a shorter term, “kin“, are very important for the
social network of families and their children. National surveys by Statistics
Sweden (1998) have found that visiting friends and relatives are common
purposes for long trips (over 100 km), and this is a longstanding finding
(TFD, 1982). It is then not surprising that a Swedish survey found that
about 80 percent of the car-owning respondents answered that the car was
“very important“ or “quite important“ for visiting friends and relatives
(SIFO, 1997). Car-less respondents were not asked this question.
Although travel surveys often report differences in travel behavior between car-owners and car-less, it is rare with studies that ask children directly about their experience of growing up without a family car. Therefore, an ethnological study of suburban car-free families is particularly interesting (Grahn, 1995), even though only four families were included, and
only two children (age 11 and 13) were interviewed. Neither of the two seemed really to miss having a car, except for one thing: One of them seemed
painfully aware of being different from her classmates, and the fact that her
family had a no car was a well-kept secret in school. However, this was a
minor finding in the study, since interviews with the adults was the main
source of data.
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A small study by Tillberg (1998) concerns the differences between children in different residential locations. School-age children in Gävle, a middle size town, had more independent mobility for leisure activities than
children had in a rural location, who were chauffeured by their parents to a
great extent. Ironically, the parents often had moved to the rural area to
provide their children with a good environment. While Tillberg's study
compares different kinds of neighborhood, and the parents' time use, it
does not answer the question: What difference does it make for the children's experiences and attitudes to car-ownership if a family has no car?
And what will be the differences between one and two cars?
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2. Purpose and design
2.1 The purpose and the data collection strategy
The general purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of the family
car in the lives of 12-16 year-old children. How does car access shape experiences and mobility, on school days and on holidays?
Within this general purpose, it was also recognized that the minds of people, their subjective experiences, are as important as their objective experiences, like participating in leisure activities, visiting relatives, and making
long journeys. Therefore, both attitudes and facts about the children’s experiences were to be investigated.
To enable us to make meaningful comparisons between the attitudes of
parents and children, and car-owning and car-less persons, in different residential areas, the best method would be structured questionnaires. By adding
several items of similar types, it would be possible to investigate separate
dimensions of attitudes in a reliable way.
To find out the facts about the children's experiences, their participation in
activities, their contact with relatives, and their travel experiences over a
longer period, interviews would be the best method. In surveys, which attempt to generalize to the whole population, asking about activities for only
the last couple of days is the best method to obtain reliable data, because this
eliminates memory mistakes. Even if the events during the last couple of days
are unusual for some individuals, the average will be correct. However, our
study had a different purpose, namely to investigate relationships of individual variation. With this purpose, it was important to obtain a “full picture“ for
each individual in the study, so that the variation between the individuals in
the sample in regard to experiences and opportunities could be assessed. The
events during the last couple of days might not be representative for their
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lives seen a longer perspective. In an interview situation, where also parents
are present, it would be possible for the children to remember travel events a
couple of weeks before. Major experiences, like long journeys, could be
counted on to be remembered over a longer period. The differences between
the individual children could then be correlated with car-ownership and other
variables related to their family and parents, like their education and attitudes.
In developmental psychology, where the research questions very often deal
with finding patterns of relationship between children’s characteristics and
their family environment, this is a very common approach. It is different from
the survey approach of travel research that aims to describe the whole population.
The interview and the questionnaire will be described in chapter 3 and
chapter 4.
2. 2 Residential settings and car-ownership
It was recognized from the start, that the structure of the built environment, its
density and characteristic in terms of services and public transport, is very
important in a study of the importance of a car. Therefore, it was decided to
investigate the issue in three residential settings: in the inner city of Stockholm, in a suburban area, and in a small town, with samples of equal size. The
following report covers the first phase of the study, which has been conducted
in the inner city of Stockholm.
In Stockholm, car ownership is much lower than the Swedish average,
particularly in the inner city. Although Americans might assume that this is
due to the residents’ low incomes, this is not the explanation, as all of the
inner city of Stockholm actually is a high-status area, with expensive housing,
even when apartments are small.
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T h e lo w le v e l of c a r - o w n e r s h i p is mo r e li k e l y du e to pa r k i n g pr o b l e m s a n d g o o d p u b l i c tr a n s p o r t . In Sö d e r m a l m , th e in n e r - c i t y a r e a
c h o s e n fo r th e s t u d y , th e r e a r e ma n y b u s - l i n e s , s o m e o f w h i c h ru n
e v e r y 5 - 1 0 mi n u t e s , c o n n e c t i n g wi t h ot h e r p a r t s of th e c i t y ; s u b w a y s
t o ot h e r pa r t s of t h e c i t y a n d to s u b u r b s ; a n d a c o m m u t e r tr a i n s y s t e m
w h i c h r u n s t o m o s t o f t h e m o r e d i s t a n t s u b u r b s . Th e s u b w a y a n d
c o m m u t e r tr a i n s a l s o ha v e c o n v e n i e n t c o n n e c t i o n s to th e C e n t r a l
S t a t i o n a n d A r l a n d a A i r p o r t , fo r lo n g d i s t a n c e tr a v e l . In o t h e r w o r d s ,
t h e pu b l i c tr a n s p o r t s i t u a t i o n is a s go o d a s or be t t e r th a n it is a n y w h e r e i n Sw e d e n .
D u e to th e p a r t i c u l a r c i r c u m s t a n c e s o f Sö d e r m a l m , e s p e c i a l l y it s
g e n e r a l l y hi g h s o c i a l s t a t u s a n d go o d pu b l i c tr a n s p o r t , we do n o t
c o n s i d e r it a re p r e s e n t a t i v e s e t t i n g fo r s t u d y i n g th e im p a c t o f th e
f a m i l y c a r on a d o l e s c e n t s . R a t h e r , we c o n s i d e r it a ba s e - l i n e s i t u a t i o n , o r pe r h a p s “t e s t - c a s e “ pl a c e d at an e x t r e m e en d - p o i n t of a co n t i n u u m o f c a r - d e p e n d e n c y in to d a y ' s Sw e d e n : If it is n o t p o s s i b l e f o r
a d o l e s c e n t s a n d th e i r fa m i l i e s to g e t a l o n g w e l l w i t h o u t a c a r in t h i s
s e t t i n g , it wi l l ha r d l y be po s s i b l e a n y w h e r e e l s e e i t h e r .
C o n s i d e r i n g th e St o c k h o l m in n e r c i t y a s a w h o l e , th i s s i t u a t i o n a p p l i e s t o 80 0 0 a d o l e s c e n t s in th e a g e 1 2 - 1 6 ye a r s , wh i c h a m o u n t s to
1 . 5 pe r c e n t of th e na t i o n ' s c h i l d r e n of th i s a g e .
2. 3 Sample composition
However, there is also the issue family type. N a t i o n w i d e , si n g l e pa r e n t s ar e
s t r o n g l y o v e r - r e p r e s e n t e d a m o n g n o n - c a r - o w n i n g fa m i l i e s . W h e r e a s
a b o u t 9 5 p e r c e n t o f tw o - p a r e n t fa m i l i e s h a v e a c a r (a n d 3 0 p e r c e n t h a v e
t w o c a r s ) , o n l y 6 0 p e r c e n t o f o n e - p a r e n t fa m i l i e s h a v e a c a r (S t a t i s t i c s
S w e d e n , 1 9 9 7 ) . In t h e in n e r c i t y o f St o c k h o l m , s i n g l e p a r e n t s w i t h c a r s
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
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a r e in fa c t ra r e , a s a r e fa m i l i e s w i t h tw o c a r s , e v e n w h e n th e r e a r e tw o
parents .
I n o r d e r n o t to c o n f o u n d c a r - o w n e r s h i p , fa m i l y ty p e a n d g e n d e r o f
t h e c h i l d in th e da t a - a n a l y s e s , it wa s ne c e s s a r y to de s i g n a s a m p l e
w h i c h i n c l u d e d a l l c o m b i n a t i o n s o f fa m i l y t y p e a n d c a r - o w n e r s h i p ,
a n d to ma k e s u r e th e nu m b e r s of gi r l s a n d b o y s we r e e q u a l in e a c h
s u c h c o m b i n a t i o n . I d e a l l y , th e r e s h o u l d be e q u a l nu m b e r s of e a c h of
t h e s e , b u t w e h a d t o c o n s i d e r t h e re a l i t y , th a t c e r t a i n ty p e s o f c o m b i n a t i o n s o f fa m i l y t y p e a n d c a r - o w n e r s h i p w o u l d n o t e x i s t in s u f f i c i e n t n u m b e r s w i t h i n a c e r t a i n a r e a . It w a s im p o r t a n t t h a t th e fa m i l i e s li v e d in th e s a m e a r e a or ne i g h b o r h o o d , a s ot h e r w i s e th e c o m p a r i s o n b e t w e e n c a r - o w n i n g a n d c a r - l e s s fa m i l i e s c o u l d b e c o n f o u n d e d by un e q u a l av a i l a b i l i t y of pu b l i c t r a n s p o r t , s e r v i c e s an d f a c i l i t i e s fo r c h i l d r e n .
T a b l e 2 . 1 s h o w s th e pl a n n e d c o m p o s i t i o n of th e s a m p l e t h e in n e r
c i t y . I n th e s u b u r b a n a n d s m a l l c i t y s e t t i n g s , fe w e r c a r - l e s s a n d m o r e
t w o - p a r e n t fa m i l i e s a r e to b e i n c l u d e d .
T a b l e 2 . 1 . P l a n n e d c o m p o s i t i o n o f i n n e r c i t y sa m p l e . N u m b e r o f c h i l d r e n
b y co m b i n a t i o n of f a m i l y t y p e , ca r - o w n e r s h i p an d g e n d e r of ch i l d .
___Family type________
Number
One-parent
Two-parent
of cars
boys girls boys girls
Total
0
9
9
9
9
36
1
4
4
10
10
28
2
0
0
2
2
4
In the present part of the study, the inner city, the main contrast will be between having a car, and not having a car. In the suburban and small city
setting, the car-less are likely to be a minority, consisting mainly of adolescents with single mothers. Although their situation needs close attention,
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
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the major comparison is more likely to be between children with one car
and with two cars in their household.
2. 4 The major research questions
The purpose of the study was to investigate the following major research
questions:
• Are children without cars more independent in their mobility pattern?
• Are children without cars more restricted in developing experiences, such
as meeting relatives, participate in voluntary (leisure) activities, and long
travels?
• In what ways are the different travel patterns related to car-ownership?
• What is the relation between parents' attitudes and the attitudes of their
adolescent children, in car-related issues?
• Are parents' attitudes toward adolescents' independent mobility related to
their car-ownership?
• How do parents' attitudes influence the experiences and opportunities of
their children?
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3. Methods
3.1 Recruiting the sample
T h e fa m i l i e s w e r e c o n t a c t e d t h r o u g h t h e s c h o o l - r e g i s t e r i n Er i k s d a l s s k o l a n , th e la r g e s t s c h o o l a t S ö d e r m a l m . O n l y fa m i l i e s li v i n g in Sö d e r m a l m we r e c o n t a c t e d . B e c a u s e th e y a l l li v e d in th e s a m e di s t r i c t ,
S ö d e r m a l m , th e i r s i t u a t i o n re g a r d i n g a c c e s s to p u b l i c t r a n s p o r t a n d
n e i g h b o r h o o d s e r v i c e s w e r e t h e s a m e . Th u s , c a r - o w n i n g a n d c a r - l e s s
f a m i l i e s ha d th e s a m e a c c e s s to a l t e r n a t i v e s to c a r tr a n s p o r t .
F a m i l i e s w h o li v e d in Sö d e r m a l m , a n d h a d a c h i l d in g r a d e 7 o r 81
i n th e fa l l te r m o f 1 9 9 9 , w e r e fi r s t s e n t a le t t e r , e x p l a i n i n g th e re s e a r c h p r o j e c t . Th e l e t t e r i n c l u d e d a re s p o n s e s h e e t a n d a s t a m p e d e n v e l o p e , wi t h a qu e s t i o n if th e y wa n t e d to p a r t i c i p a t e . Ab o u t on e in
f i v e o f th e s e w e r e re t u r n e d , o f w h i c h a b o u t h a l f w a n t e d to p a r t i c i p a t e , h a l f d e c l i n e d . W e d i d n o t ma k e a n y fu r t h e r a t t e m p t to re a c h t h e
f a m i l i e s w h o h a d d e c l i n e d b y le t t e r , b u t a l l th e o t h e r s re c e i v e d a
p h o n e c a l l re g a r d l e s s o f w h e t h e r th e y h a d r e t u r n e d th e re s p o n s e s h e e t
o r n o t , u n t i l w e h a d fi l l e d th e p l a n n e d n u m b e r o f fa m i l i e s in e a c h
“ c e l l “ , o r c o m b i n a t i o n o f fa m i l y ty p e , c a r - o w n e r s h i p a n d g e n d e r .
W h e n w e c a l l e d , w e d i d n o t k n o w w h e t h e r th e fa m i l y h a d n o , o n e o r
t w o c a r s , a n d w h e t h e r th e r e w e r e o n e o r tw o p a r e n t s . In th e b e g i n n i n g , a l l fa m i l i e s w h o a g r e e d t o p a r t i c i p a t e w e r e in t e r v i e w e d a n d
l a t e r a s k e d t o c o m p l e t e t h e q u e s t i o n n a i r e . La t e r o n , w h e n s o m e o f t h e
c e l l s w e r e fi l l e d , w e h a d to s a y n o to fa m i l i e s w h o w e r e w i l l i n g to
participate.
Because children start school at age 7 in Sweden, this corresponds to grade 8 and 9 in
the USA.
1
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M o s t of th e a d o l e s c e n t s we r e 13 - 1 5 ye a r s a t th e ti m e of th e in t e r v i e w . I n fi f t e e n fa m i l i e s , th e r e w e r e tw o c h i l d r e n in t h e a g e - s p a n 1 2 1 6 , i n w h i c h c a s e b o t h w e r e i n c l u d e d . Th u s o u r s a m p l e c o n t a i n s 7 1
c h i l d r e n i n 5 7 fa m i l i e s . Th e c h i l d r e n w e r e i n t e r v i e w e d w h e n a t l e a s t
o n e p a r e n t w a s a t h o m e , w i t h i n e a r s h o t if n o t in th e s a m e ro o m .
T a b l e 3 . 1 C o m p o s i t i o n o f sa m p l e . N u m b e r o f c h i l d r e n b y
c o m b i n a t i o n of f a m i l y t y p e , ca r - o w n e r s h i p a n d ge n d e r of ch i l d .
Family type
Number
One-parent
Two-parent
of cars
boys girls boys girls
Total
0
9
9
10
9
37
1
4
5
10
10
29
2
0
0
2
3
5
B y lu c k ra t h e r th a n b y d e s i g n , th e s a m p l e b e c a m e q u i t e b a l a n c e d in
r e s p e c t to p a r e n t ' s e d u c a t i o n . In fo u r o f t h e fi v e c o m b i n a t i o n s o f fa m i l y ty p e a n d c a r - o w n e r s h i p , ha l f th e pa r e n t s ha d a un i v e r s i t y e x a m ,
h a l f h a d n o t . Th e e x c e p t i o n w a s t h e c o m b i n a t i o n w i t h “ n o c a r , o n e
p a r e n t “ in wh i c h on l y a th i r d o f th e pa r e n t s ha d a un i v e r s i t y e x a m .
T h e fa c t th a t Sö d e r m a l m g e n e r a l l y is a n a t t r a c t i v e , h i g h s t a t u s a r e a
d i d no t me a n th a t t h e r e we r e no bl u e - c o l l a r wo r k e r s a m o n g th e pa r e n t s . Fo r mo t h e r s , a s s i s t a n t n u r s e w a s a c o m m o n o c c u p a t i o n , a m o n g
f a t h e r s th e r e we r e ja n i t o r s a n d a pa i n t e r , a m o n g ot h e r s .
A l t h o u g h th e p a r e n t s ' o c c u p a t i o n a l le v e l w a s c l o s e l y re l a t e d to
t h e i r e d u c a t i o n , t h e p a r e n t s ’ o c c u p a t i o n s d i f f e r e d in o t h e r re s p e c t s .
C a r - o w n e r s mo r e o f t e n h a d jo b s w h e r e th e y a t ti m e s w e r e re q u i r e d to
t r a n s p o r t th i n g s in th e i r c a r , a n d on e wa s a ta x i - d r i v e r . Qu i t e of t e n
t h e r e f o r e , a t le a s t s o m e o f th e i r c a r - r e l a t e d e x p e n s e s w e r e c o v e r e d by
t h e i r e m p l o y e r s o r th e i r b u s i n e s s e s . Fo r b o t h c a r - o w n e r s a n d c a r - l e s s
p a r e n t s , h o w e v e r , ge n e r a l l y th e mo r e e d u c a t e d wo u l d ha v e hi g h e r
incomes .
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3.2 The interview
M o s t o f ti m e , th e c h i l d r e n w e r e in t e r v i e w e d in th e i r h o m e s . W e re q u e s t e d th e p a r e n t s to b e h o m e , b u t it w a s n o t n e c e s s a r y fo r th e m t o
s t a y in th e s a m e ro o m , a f t e r th e y h a d a n s w e r e d a fe w q u e s t i o n s o f
b a c k g r o u n d in f o r m a t i o n , li k e th e i r e d u c a t i o n , oc c u p a t i o n , bi r t h ye a r
a n d wh e t h e r th e y ha d a dr i v e r ' s li c e n c e .
H o w e v e r , mo s t of th e pa r e n t s we r e in t e r e s t e d a n d wa n t e d to li s t e n .
O f t e n w e a l s o re c e i v e d q u i t e a lo t o f b a c k g r o u n d a b o u t th e i r c h o i c e
o f c a r - o w n e r s h i p , a n d if th e y e a r l i e r h a d h a d a c a r . O n l y in a fe w
c a s e s d i d p a r e n t s ( m a i n l y s i n g l e mo t h e r s ) e x p r e s s a s t r o n g w i s h fo r a
c a r th a t th e y c o u l d no t a f f o r d . M o r e c o m m o n l y c a r - l e s s pa r e n t s s a i d
t h a t ma i n t a i n i n g a c a r wa s no t wo r t h th e c o s t .
B e c a u s e w e w e r e ma i n l y in t e r e s t e d in th e fa c t s a b o u t th e c h i l d r e n ' s
t r a v e l s , le i s u r e a c t i v i t i e s , me e t i n g re l a t i v e s , a n d g e n e r a l l y g e t t i n g
a r o u n d , th e e x a c t w o r d i n g s or o r d e r in po s i n g th e qu e s t i o n s wa s no t
c r u c i a l . W e c o u l d c o n d u c t th e i n t e r v i e w s in a re l a x e d a t m o s p h e r e ,
a n d th e p a r e n t s w e r e o f t e n h e l p f u l in re m e m b e r i n g w h a t th e i r c h i l d r e n h a d d o n e , a t w h a t ti m e . Pa r t i c u l a r l y w i t h th e s e c t i o n a b o u t re l at i v e s , pa r e n t s c o u l d c o n t r i b u t e wi t h in in f o r m a t i o n wh e n th e 12 - 1 6 y e a r - o l d s w e r e n o t q u i t e s u r e , fo r e x a m p l e w h e r e th e y l i v e d .
T h e mo s t im p o r t a n t pa r t s of th e in t e r v i e w w i t h th e c h i l d r e n c o v e red:
• Th e w a y t o s c h o o l , d i s t a n c e a n d t r a v e l m o d e ; a n d i f i t h a p p e n e d t h a t th e y w o u l d g e t a ri d e w i t h th e i r p a r e n t s , in p a r t i c u l a r i f th e we a t h e r wa s ba d , o r if th e y we r e in a hu r r y
• Or g a n i z e d le i s u r e a c t i v i t i e s , wh a t th e c h i l d r e n di d , ho w
o f t e n a n d ho w th e y go t th e r e
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
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• Fr e e le i s u r e a c t i v i t i e s , w h a t th e y d i d a n d h o w th e y g o t
there
• Th e i r a c t i v i t i e s , d u r i n g t h e l a s t w e e k - e n d s , p a r t i c u l a r l y i n
t e r m s o f tr a v e l l i n g
• Tr a v e l s a n d a c t i v i t i e s d u r i n g t h e l a s t s c h o o l h o l i d a y s
• Th e l o n g e s t j o u r n e y t h e y h a d e v e r m a d e , s i n c e t h e a g e o f
7 , a n d th e th r e e lo n g e s t jo u r n e y s du r i n g th e la s t ye a r .
• Th e k i n s t r u c t u r e o f t h e fa m i l y , fr o m t h e p o i n t o f v i e w o f
c h i l d ( p a r e n t a n d s i b l i n g s li v i n g in a n o t h e r ho u s e h o l d ,
g r a n d p a r e n t , a u n t s a n d u n c l e s ) . O n l y re l a t i v e s w h o m th e
c h i l d h a d me t du r i n g th e la s t y e a r we r e in c l u d e d .
• Fo r e a c h k i n h o u s e h o l d , th e p l a c e w h e r e t h e re l a t i v e s li v e d , a n d wh e n th e c h i l d ha s la s t me t th e m , a n d ho w of t e n
t h e y us u a l l y me t .
S o m e o f th e s e p o i n t s d e s e r v e s o m e c o m m e n t s . In re g a r d t o g e t t i n g
a ri d e to s c h o o l w i t h a p a r e n t , mo s t o f th e ti m e w e h a d to la u g h to g e t h e r a t th e th o u g h t of s a v i n g ti m e , be c a u s e it wa s ob v i o u s th a t i t
w o u l d n o t a p p l y . Ev e n i f t h e fa m i l y h a d a c a r , i t w o u l d t a k e l o n g e r t o
t a k e th e c a r th a n f o r th e c h i l d to ru n o r e v e n w a l k .
C o n c e r n i n g k i n re l a t i o n s , w e a s k e d s e v e r a l q u e s t i o n s re l a t e d to th e
f r e q u e n c y o f th e me e t i n g re l a t i v e s , in o r d e r n o t to re c e i v e a s t a n d a rd
p h r a s e fr o m th e a d o l e s c e n t , to fi n i s h th e i n t e r v i e w q u i c k l y . (S o m e o f
t h e a d o l e s c e n t s b e c a m e b o r e d a f t e r a b o u t h a l f a n h o u r . ) If th e r e w e r e
m a n y ki n ho u s e h o l d s , we li m i t e d th e in t e r v i e w to th e 8 mo s t c l o s e l y
r e l a t e d . Ot h e r w i s e th e in t e r v i e w be c a m e to o lo n g .
I n re g a r d to th e lo n g jo u r n e y s , v e r y o f t e n , th e in f o r m a t i o n a b o u t
t h e th r e e lo n g e s t j o u r n e y s du r i n g th e la s t ye a r tu r n e d up a g a i n a s a
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
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s c h o o l h o l i d a y tr i p o r a v i s i t to a re l a t i v e . O n l y o c c a s i o n a l l y d i d th e
m a p p i n g o f th e s e o t h e r a c t i v i t i e s le a d to a re v i s i o n o f e a r l i e r in f o r m a t i o n , li k e a lo n g e r jo u r n e y t h a n th o s e re p o r t e d a s th e th r e e lo n g e s t
d u r i n g th e la s t ye a r . Ho w e v e r , s i n c e we c o u l d c h e c k th e d i f f e r e n t
p a r t of th e in t e r v i e w a g a i n s t e a c h o t h e r in th i s wa y , we a r e qu i t e c o n f i d e n t a b o u t t h e re l i a b i l i t y o f o u r i n t e r v i e w d a t a . Th e r e a r e fe w m e m o r y mi s t a k e s a b o u t th e e v e n t s th a t we c l a s s i f y a s th e c h i l d r e n ’ s e x perienc es .
T h e a n s w e r s w e r e re c o r d e d in th e in t e r v i e w fo r m d u r i n g th e in t e r v i e w i t s e l f . Th e n e x t d a y t h e f o r m w a s c h e c k e d a g a i n , a n d c l a r i f y i n g
notes added.
3.3 The questionnaire
T h e qu e s t i o n n a i r e w a s de v e l o p e d ov e r a pe r i o d of s e v e r a l mo n t h s ,
a n d t r i e d o u t i n a p i l o t s t u d y . Th e fo r m i s i n c l u d e d a s a n a p p e n d i x .
T h e qu e s t i o n n a i r e c o n s i s t e d of s i x pa g e s wi t h a to t a l o f 64 it e m s .
E a c h p a g e h a d a h e a d i n g , in d i c a t i n g th e th e m e . Fo r th e fi r s t fo u r p a g e s , th e it e m s w e r e in th e fo r m o f s t a t e m e n t s fo r w h i c h th e re s p o n d e n t s h o u l d c h e c k o n e of th e a l t e r n a t i v e s “ N o t tr u e a t a l l “ , “ p a r t l y
t r u e “ “ p r e c i s e l y tr u e “ . He r e pr o - c a r a n d c a r - c r i t i c a l i t e m s a l t e r n a t e d .
T h e it e m s on th e tw o la s t pa g e s we r e pa g e s we r e c o n s t r u c t e d a li t t l e
d i f f e r e n t l y , b u t a g a i n w i t h fi x e d re s p o n s e a l t e r n a t i v e s . Ea c h s e c t i o n
e n d e d w i t h s o m e s p a c e fo r fr e e c o m m e n t s , w h i c h w a s u s e d o n l y ra rely.
P a r e n t s a n d c h i l d r e n fi l l e d o u t id e n t i c a l f o r m s , c o v e r i n g
• c a r s in ge n e r a l
• en v i r o n m e n t a l pr o b l e m s of au t o m o b i l e s
• tr a f f i c pl a n n i n g a n d po l i c i e s
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
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• c a r s in fa m i l y w i t h c h i l d r e n
• th e n e e d fo r a c a r fo r fa m i l i e s in d i f f e r e n t k i n d s o f
r e s i d e n t i a l a r e a s ( t h i s p a r t h a d 5 re s p o n s e a l t e r n a t i v e in s t e a d of th r e e )
• a l l o w a b l e fr e e d o m fo r a d o l e s c e n t s to u s e th e p u b l i c
t r a n s p o r t in da y t i m e a n d e v e n i n g s .
B e c a u s e th e c h i l d r e n a n d th e a d u l t s we r e to a n s w e r id e n t i c a l qu e s t i o n s , th e q u e s t i o n n a i r e fo r m w a s ma d e a s s i m p l e a s p o s s i b l e , w i t h
r a t h e r s h o r t s t a t e m e n t s a n d o n l y th r e e re s p o n s e a l t e r n a t i v e s .
T h e fi r s t tw e n t y fa m i l i e s w e r e in t e r v i e w e d b e f o r e th e q u e s t i o n n a i r e h a d b e e n c o n s t r u c t e d a n d t r i e d o u t . Th e s e w e r e s e n t t h e q u e s t i o n n a i r e b y ma i l . O c c a s i o n a l l y w e h a d to s e n d n e w fo r m s , a s th e fi r s t
b a t c h h a d b e e n d i s p l a c e d . Fo r t h e re m a i n d e r o f th e fa m i l i e s , th e
q u e s t i o n n a i r e wa s a d m i n i s t e r e d in c o n n e c t i o n wi t h th e in t e r v i e w .
U s u a l l y it w a s c o m p l e t e d b y th e fa m i l y me m b e r s s o m e d a y s la t e r , b u t
s o m e fa m i l i e s d i d i t o n th e s p o t . It u s u a l l y to o k 1 0 - 1 5 mi n u t e s to
c o m p l e t e th e qu e s t i o n n a i r e .
A fe w p a r e n t s a n d c h i l d r e n s e e m e d v e r y re l u c t a n t to fi l l in th e
f o r m s , w h e n w e c a l l e d to re m i n d th e m . W h e n w e o f f e r e d t o re a d th e
i t e m s i n s t e a d , pe r f o r m i n g a n or a l qu e s t i o n n a i r e , th e y w e r e ha p p y
w i t h th i s s o l u t i o n . In th i s w a y w e o b t a i n e d a 1 0 0 p e r c e n t re s p o n s e
r a t e , f r o m th e fa m i l i e s w e h a d in t e r v i e w e d . A fe w c h i l d r e n , h o w e v e r ,
s k i p p e d a p a g e . W h e n th e r e w e r e tw o p a r e n t s i n th e fa m i l y , w e o b t a i n e d q u e s t i o n n a i r e s fr o m b o t h , e v e n if w e h a d o n l y me t o n e o f
t h e m d u r i n g th e in t e r v i e w . (I n a d d i t i o n , w e a l s o o b t a i n e d q u e s t i o n n a i r e r e s p o n s e s fr o m s e v e r a l s i b l i n g s , w h i c h w e h a d n o t in t e r v i e w e d
b e c a u s e t h e y w e r e o u t s i d e t h e 1 2 - 1 6 - y e a r a g e ra n g e . Th e s e w e h a v e
y e t to a n a l y z e . )
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3.4 Data analysis
T h e c o d i n g of th e q u e s t i o n n a i r e s wa s ve r y s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d , a s nu m e r i c a l v a l u e s w e r e a l r e a d y g i v e n i n t h e fo r m . Th e s e w e r e s i m p l y e n t e r e d in t o th e da t a s e t .
T h e in t e r v i e w d a t a w a s fi r s t a n a l y z e d q u a l i t a t i v e l y , to g e t a n
o v e r v i e w of th e c o n t e n t s . Af t e r w a r d s , va r i a b l e s a n d c o d i n g c a t e g o r i e s we r e c o n s t r u c t e d , to qu a n t i f y th e in f o r m a t i o n th a t wa s mo s t
r e l e v a n t to in c l u d e in th e mu l t i v a r i a t e a n a l y s i s .
T h e s t a t i s t i c a l a n a l y s e s w e r e p e r f o r m e d w i t h th e SA S ® p r o g r a m .
F i r s t , t h e d e s c r i p t i v e a n a l y s e s w e r e p e r f o r m e d . Th e re s u l t s a r e re p o r t e d in th e b e g i n n i n g o f c h a p t e r 4 a n d c h a p t e r 5 . Fo r c o r r e l a t i o n s
a n d mu l t i v a r i a t e re g r e s s i o n s , w i d e r d i m e n s i o n s th a n th e s e p a r a t e v a r i a b l e s w e r e o f t e n re q u i r e d , w h i c h w a s o b t a i n e d b y c o m b i n i n g v a r i a b l e s . Th e d e t a i l s o f t h e s e p r o c e d u r e s a r e re p o r t e d i n c o n n e c t i o n
w i t h th e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f th e re s u l t s .
Finally, a small note on the multivariate regressions. Much to our surprise, the experiences of the children, e. g. their number of leisure activities, independent mobility, long journeys, and kin contacts, a showed little
difference between boys and girls. Certainly the qualitative data revealed
differences in interests between boys and girls, but the quantitative measures of number of activities and degree of independence showed no difference. Also, parents’ attitudes about letting their children get around by
themselves showed no differences between boys and girls, and neither did
travel modes on long journeys, or kin relations. Therefore, the gender variable was left out of the multivariate analyses.
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4. Parents’ and children’s attitudes
4.1 The coding of the questionnaire
For the sake of saving space, we will use the expressions “car-owning children“ and “car-less children“ instead of the cumbersome but more correct
“children with car-owning parents“ and “children in car-less (or car-free)
families“.
In Table 4.1-4.7 the responses by parents and children are presented, in
separate columns after car ownership. The families with two cars are included in the column “car-owners“. The response alternatives were coded as
follows: 1=not true at all; 2=partly true; 3=precisely true. Thus a mean value
under 1.5 means a general disagreement with the item statement, a mean
around 2 means that the average respondent thinks that the statement is
partly true, and a mean over 2.5 means that most respondents agree with the
item statement.
4.2. “Cars in general“
The first page of the questionnaire contained 11 items (Table 4.1), mainly
dealing with the practical or emotional need for cars in general (“If you neither have a car nor a driver's licence, you really become stuck“, “Without
a car of one's own, life becomes very dull“, “If you can manage without a
car, it is the best way to live”).
The very first item, “There are both good and bad sides of cars“ had a
very high level of agreement, indicating that most people experience cars
as having drawbacks as well as benefits. This result had been expected, and
this item had been placed first on purpose, in order to introduce the idea
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that there could be both positive and negative statements about cars. It was
not intended to be part of a scale measuring an attitude dimension about
cars, due to its ambivalent nature. It is impossible to know what a disagreement would indicate – a mainly positive or a mainly negative view of
cars?
In regard to item #2, “I can not imagine living without a car in today's
society“, most car-owners felt the statement was partly true. Non-car-owners generally disagreed, which is not surprising, since they actually did
live without owning a car. However, a few of them actually agreed, and we
can only speculate why they answered as if they could not imagine living
the life they really lived. One explanation is that they did not consider
themselves living without a car, since they occasionally rented or borrowed
cars. Another explanation is that they responded as if the statement was “I
can not imagine today’s society without cars“ or something similar. Furthermore, there is always the possibility of a response mistake, particularly
since the item contains a negation.
The mean on item #2 for the car-less respondents thereby serves to remind us of reliability problems, which are always present. In psychological
and educational research, a common method to deal with this is to combine
related responses into a “scale“ or “index“, which simultaneously gives a
more generalized and a more reliable information about each respondent's
attitude on a certain matter or dimension, than responses on separate items
do. When studying the relationship between attitudes and personal characteristics, the use of wider dimensions are particularly useful, and therefore
such scales were used.
Still, for describing the contents of the attitudes, the general level of
agreement on individual items is very informative, and therefore will to be
described and commented upon in sections below.
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Table 4.1 Means and standard deviations– for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ” Cars in general ” (Response alternatives 1=Not true
at all 2=Partly true 3=Precisely true)
Parents_______________ Children______________
Car-owners
(N = 51)
M sd
Car-less
(N=42)
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
1.There are both good and bad
sides with cars
2.8 .50
2.8 .41
2.7 .44
2.7 .47
2. I can not imagine living
without a car in today’s society
2.0 .76
1.3 .58
1.7 .62
1.2 .37
3. If you neither have a car or
driving licence, you really
become stuck
2.1 .68
1.5. 59
1.6 .60
1.4 .60
4. To rent a car when you need
to is just as good as owning a car
2.1 .62
2.4 .50
2.1 .80
2.4 .54
5. It is common that people take
their car, even when they equally
well could walk, bike or go by
public transport
2.6 .52
2.9 .35
2.8 .50
2.6 .53
6. It is really not difficult to live
without a car, if you want to you
can always find alternatives
2.1 .63
2.6 .53
2.5 .70
2.8 .37
7.If you live in the center of
Stockholm you don’t need a car
2.2 .61
2.7 .44
2.3 .70
2.6 .54
8. Without a car of one ´s own,
life becomes very dull
1.5 .75
1.3 .50
1.2 .43
1.2 .46
9. If you don’t have a car, you
have a social disadvantage because people look down on you
1.2 .47
1.1 .41
1.1 .34
1.1 .41
10. If you don’t have a car, you
are respected as a model in
regard to the environment
1.5 .61
1.5 .50
1.6 .60
1.8 .60
11. If you can manage without a
car, this is the best way to live
1.8 .71
2.1 .66
2.1 .75
2.1 .53
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Item #3 “If you neither have a car nor a driver's licence, you really become
stuck“, expresses the idea that a car is necessary for mobility, if not also for
“freedom“. It was generally rejected, except among car-owning parents.
Even so, the mean (2.1) for this group indicated only a partial agreement,
and their children disagreed as much as the car-less parents did. Another
item that expressed a positive view of car-ownership was #8 “Without a car
of one's own, life becomes very dull“. It was generally rejected even
stronger, but again, the car-owning parents agreed the most. On the other
hand, the items which expressed a critical view of car-ownership or carusage (#4, #5, #6, and #11) generally received a higher level of agreement.
Here car-owning parents agreed the least, compared to the other three categories of respondents, namely car-owning children and car-less parents and
children. With low levels of agreement with the pro-car items (#2, #3, and
#8) and high levels of agreement with car-critical items, we must conclude
that this group of respondents expresses a view that cars are not strictly
necessary for life-style quality. This was particularly true for the adolescents. Of course, these respondents lived in the inner city of Stockholm,
which quite likely has influenced their opinion. Still, Andréasson &
Sjöberg (1996) and Sjöberg (2000) have found similar attitudes among young adults in Göteborg (the second largest city of Sweden).
Two items did not deal with car usage per se, but instead with social
status related to car ownership, and in different directions, as a disadvantage or advantage. These were #9 “If you don't have a car, you have a social disadvantage because people look down on you“ and #10 “If you don't
have a car, you are respected as a model in regard to the environment“. The
disadvantage item was entirely rejected by almost all respondents, while
the advantage item more often was agreed upon (particularly by the carless children). Thus, most respondents did not seem to think that car-own-
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ership had any social status impact at all, but in relation to environmental
concerns, not to own a car could bring a little bit of extra status.
4.3. “Automobiles and the environment“
The second page of the questionnaire was divided into two sections headed
“Car traffic and the local environment“ and “Cars and the global environment“, with five items in each (Table 4.2 and 4.3). Due to the nature of the
environmental theme, most items were phrased in a negative direction; e.g.
that cars were a problem rather than an asset. The first item expressed the
view that car traffic makes neighborhoods unpleasant (#12), while #16 made
the opposite point, namely that streets without cars make a city dull. Generally, #12 got more agreements than #16, particularly by parents without
cars, who also disagreed most on #16. On the whole then, most respondents
did not appreciate car traffic in their neighborhood. The wording of item #14
was “One must accept that there are lots of cars and traffic in modern
towns“, a wording which takes a negative impact of traffic for granted, although it simultaneously endorses traffic. This item received partial agreements by most respondents, whether they were car-owners or not.
The item “There are too many large parking lots which make things
ugly, both in the city and when you want to get into nature“ was particularly
expected to yield different responses by car-owners and the car-less, since
car-owners very often experience a scarcity of parking space, and therefore
feel relieved when they see a big parking lot. Car-less persons might instead
see asphalt wasteland. This expectation was born out, with a highly significant response difference between car-owning and car-less parents. For
their children, the difference was much less, and the car-owning children
answered more like the car-less parents.
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Item #15 “I find the exhausts bothersome as soon as there is car traffic
nearby“ mainly got partial agreements. Parents, and particularly the car-less,
agreed more than their children did. This reinforces the finding in a pilot
study that older (middle-aged) persons seemed to be more bothered by exhausts than the younger.
Table 4.2 Means and standard deviations– for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ” Car traffic and the local environment ” (Response
alternatives 1=Not true at all 2=Partly true 3=Precisely true)
Parents_____________ Children____________
Car-owners
(N = 51)
M sd
Car-less
(N=42)
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
12.The more car traffic, the less
pleasant will a neighborhood be
2.4 .53
2.8 .39
2.2 .72
2.5 .60
13. There are too many large
parking lots which make things
ugly, both in the city and when
you want to get into nature
1.7 .67
2.3 .74
2.1 .75
2.3 .62
14. One most accept that there
are lots of cars and traffic in
modern towns
2.1 .66
2.1 .57
2.1 .74
2.1 .78
15. I find it the exhausts
bothersome as soon as there is
car traffic nearby
1.7 .54
2.0 .56
1.6 .60
1.6 .66
16.If there are no cars on the
1.7 .71
street, the city becomes dull and
dead, and that also goes for
private cars
1.5 .55
1.7 .68
1.7 .82
Turning to the environmental impact of cars in a global perspective, two
items expressed a rather severe view, namely #18, that ”car traffic must be
reduced to avoid a hazardous climate change“, and #21 “Today's traffic system with many cars will leave a poorer world to future generations“. Both
of these received more agreements than disagreements, with car-less parents agreeing the most. The only pro-car statement in these sections was
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#20, “The environmental problems of car traffic are mostly exaggerated“.
This item received partial agreements at most, with the car-less parents
strongly disagreeing. However their own children, with a mean response of
1.7, was the category which most often thought car-related environmental
problems are exaggerated.
Table 4.3 Means and standard deviations for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ”Car traffic and the global environment”
(Response alternatives 1=Not true at all 2=Partly true 3=Precisely true)
Parents_____________ Children___________
Car-owners
(N = 51)
M sd
Car-less
(N=42)
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
17. If the car industry really wanted,
they could quite easily produce an
environmentally friendly car
2.5 .61
2.5 .55
2.3 .66
2.4 .53
18. Car traffic must be reduced to
avoid a hazardous climate change
2.4 .59
2.6 .57
2.5 .71
2.5 .60
19. Cars require so much resources in
material, fuel, and road constructions
that massmotoring never can be
environmentally friendly
1.9 .71
2.3 .62
1.8 .73
1.8 .67
20. The environmental problems of
car traffic are most often exaggerated
1.6 .63
1.2 .40
1.6 .65
1.7 .56
21.Today´s traffic system with many 2.2 .61
cars will leave a poorer world to future
generations
2.7 .45
2.4 .66
2.4 .55
Two items dealt with the idea of alleviating the destructive impact of cars.
Item #17 expressed the view that carmakers easily could make an environmentally friendly car if they wanted to. This statement generally received a
quite high level of endorsement, with little difference between car-owners
and car-less respondents. Item #18 made the opposite point, that mass
ownership of cars never could be made environmentally friendly, since
cars demand so much resources. This statement generally received only
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partial agreements.
All in all, the most common view seems to be that although cars and car
traffic are destructive to the environment, there will be ways to alleviate
the problems, in the future. Of course, not all respondents think the same,
and parents without cars usually take the most negative view of cars.
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4.4 “Traffic policy and planning issues“
The third section of the questionnaire contained ten items (Table 4.4) under
the heading “Traffic policy and planning“. The first item read “Car-owners
are overtaxed; the taxes on things like gasoline are far too high“. In Sweden, the tax level of gasoline has often been an issue, and the organizations
for motorists have repeated protested against what they see as an unfair exploitation of motorists. Thus, we had an expected a high level of agreement
with this item, particularly among the car-owners, of course. In fact, the
average response by car-owning parents was 2.1, just a partial agreement.
The car-less parents' average was, not surprisingly, lower (1.8).
The three items with the highest level of agreement (#23, #24 and #28),
between 2.3 and 2.8 in all groups, all had a content about supporting carfree settings. Likewise, the item with the lowest levels of agreement (#27)
promoted a car-oriented infrastructure. This agrees with findings by Gustavsson (2000) and Nilsson & Küller (2000), that policies for car-free
neighborhoods are appreciated. At the same time, item #26 that called for
road pricing, received few agreements, which also agrees with their results.
Although the adolescents seemed to think one quite easily could get
along without a car (according to their responses in the first section), they
were not in favor of economic sanctions against car-owners. In particular
were they more likely than their parents to agree with #25 “Everybody
ought to have the right to free parking at home“.
Taken the above response pattern as a whole, we can interpret the results
as an endorsement of policies to curtail car traffic, but not by economic rationing, such as road pricing. The ideal for most people seems to be a reduction of traffic, which occurs without negative sanctions on motorists.
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Table 4.4 Means and standard deviations for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ” Traffic policy and planning ”
(Response alternatives 1=Not true at all 2=Partly true 3=Precisely true)
Parents
Children____________
Car-owners
(N = 51)
M sd
Car-less
(N=42)
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
2.1 .85
1.8 .74
2.1 .72
2.1 .73
23. In the cities one ought to improve for 2.4 .71
the pedestrians and public transport,
even if its become more difficult
for the motorist
2.8 .39
4 .70
2.4 .60
24. There should be more of
car free zones in the cities
2.3 .78
2.7 .44
2.5 .66
2.6 .72
25. Everybody ought to have the right to
free parking at home
2.1 .87
1.9 .75
2.5 .75
2.3 .84
26. To introduce road pricing or tolls is
a good way to counteract congestion
1.7 .60
1.9 .66
1.8 .71
1.6 .59
27. The planning ought to allow more
supermarkets with free car parking,
even if it means that society becomes
more car dependent
1.6 .75
1.4 .57
1.8 .67
1.5 .66
28. If nothing is done to counteract the
mass-motoring, traffic and number of
cars will increase, which is negative
for the well-being in the society
2.3 .65
2.6 .54
2.4 .74
2.5 .65
29. Car-less people and their
needs are too often neglected
2.0 .69
2.5 .50
1.9 .68
2.1 .75
30. There ought to be strict limitations
on private cars. (But not for freight
vehicles for disabled persons or
emergency vehicles)
1.6 .69
2.1 .75
1.8 .67
2.0 .78
31. With good planning and bypasses
it is possible to avoid the problems
with disturbing motor traffic, even while
people can continue to drive their cars as
much as today or even more
2.0 .78
2.0 .77
2.1 .61
2.1 .68
22. Car-owners are overtaxed; the
taxes on things like gasoline are far
too high
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We can also note that adolescents are both against large parking lots, when
they consider the local environment, and for free parking at home, when
they consider traffic policies. Quite likely, this inconsistent response pattern is an expression of a youthful naiveté about the consequences of providing free parking for everyone. In fact, even adults seem to find it difficult to consider the car traffic system in its entirety, in which car free streets and easy car accessibility are incompatible entities (Gustavsson, 2000).
4.5 “The car in families with children“
Since the study was concerned with cars in relation to children's experiences and opportunities, one page with 13 items (Table 4.5) was devoted particularly to this topic. Six items dealt with vacations, four with chauffeuring of children. One item concerned each of driving practice; the status of
car-less children; and visiting relatives.
In relation to car vacations, the idea that children without cars “miss out
on many fine experiences“ (#32) draw only partial agreements (mostly by
car-owners), while the statement that long car trips “are very boring for
children“ draw more agreements, particularly among the car-less parents.
The statement “Car vacations strengthens family cohesiveness“ and
“The best vacations are those without car travel“ draw similar levels of
agreement from parents (1.5–1.8) but more from children (1.6–2.2), in both
cases, although the first is positive to car vacations, the second negative.
Similarly, the statement “A great advantage with cars is family privacy. If
you go by public transport it is embarrassing, for example when the children do not behave“ (#36) was generally rejected by parents, but both carowning and car-less children partially agreed.
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Table 4.5 Means and standard deviations for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ” Cars in families with children ” Response alternatives (1=Not true at all 2=Partly true 3=Precisely true)
Parents____________ Children_____________
Car-owners
(N = 51)
M sd
Car-less
(N=42)
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
32.If the family does not have a car, the
children miss out on many fine experiences
1.9 .80
1.5 .55
1.8 .64
1.4 .54
33. Long car trips are very boring for children
2.1 .72
2.6 .59
2.3 .70
2.3 .70
34. Car vacations strengthens family cohesiveness
1.8 .77
1.5 .59
2.0 .71
1.6 .59
35. The best vacations are those without car
travel
1.5 .61
1.8 .75
1.7 .76
2.2 .65
36. A great advantage with cars is family privacy.
If you go by public transport it is embarrassing,
for example when the children do not behave
1.4 .63
1.4 .64
2.1 .71
1.8 .73
37. When you go on a ski vacation, a car becomes necessary
1.8 .79
1.5 .63
2.0 .86
1.6 .72
38. It is important that school children can get a
ride to different activities
1.9 .71
1.7 .62
2.0 .83
1.5 .64
39. If there is no car in family, children learn
better to get around by themselves
2.2 .70
2.5 .63
2.4 .60
2.9 .34
40. There is a risk that modern children will get
lazy and out of shape because they so often get
rides
1.9 .73
2.2 .69
2.2 .74
2.5 .64
2.7 .52
2.8 .39
2.9 .38
2.8 .46
42. It is important to have a car so parents can
practice driving with their teen-agers, to make it
easier for them to obtain a driver’s licence
1.8 .79
1.9 .64
2.2 .73
1.8 .69
43. If the family does not own a car, it is embarrassing for the children, since everyone else has
a car
1.1 .38
1.2 .53
1.2 .56
1.1 .39
44. If the family does not have a car, it becomes
much more difficult to keep in contact with
relatives
1.7 .72
1.4 .62
1.9 .71
1.1 .34
41. In our family there is no risk that the
children will be chauffeured too much
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The transport utility of car was highlighted in the items “When you go on a
ski vacation, a car becomes necessary“ (#37) and “If the family does not
have a car, it becomes much more difficult to keep in contact with relatives“ (#44). Both received partial agreements by car-owning parents and
children, but were generally totally rejected by the car-less.
The two negative statements about chauffeuring children, namely “There
is a risk that modern children will get lazy and out of shape because they so
often get rides“ (#40) and “If there is no car in the family, children learn
better to get around by themselves“ (#39) were generally agreed upon
(mean responses between 1.9 and 2.9), with the car-less generally agreeing
most. The car-less children themselves seemed particularly convinced that
their car-less situation made them more able to get around by themselves.
The pro-chauffeuring item “It is important that school age children can
get rides by car to their activities“ (#38) received only partial agreements,
primarily from car-owners. As a rule, then, the respondents in this sample
were fairly critical to the idea of chauffeuring children. And almost everyone agreed with the statement “In our family there is no risk that children
become chauffeured too much“.
4.6 “Families with children in different types of settings“
The parents during the interview often spontaneously brought up the fact
that the need for a car is related to the type of area, or setting, where a
family lives. To enable us to investigate their views on this matter more
systematically, one page of the questionnaire was devoted to this issue
(Table 4.6). Four different settings were identified: Inner city in a metropolis2, a suburb in a metropolis, a small town, and a rural area. For each
"Metropolis" or "storstad" is a concept in Swedish social science. It is applied to only
three Swedish cities, Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö.
2
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setting, two kinds of families were exemplified: A family with young children and a family with children over 12 years old. Altogether, this made
eight situations to consider
Table 4.6 Means and standard deviations for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ”Families with children in different types of residential areas ” Response alternatives (See text)
Parents_____________ Children______________
Car-owners
(N = 51)
M sd
Car-less
(N=42)
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
45. Family with young children in
inner city, in a metropolis (200 m to a
grocery store, several bus lines and subway
leaves every ten minutes. Expensive parking.
2.8 .99
1.8 .92
2.4 .83
1.5 .74
46. Family with children over 12 years in an
inner city in a metropolis (200 m to a
grocery store, several bus lines and subway
leaves every ten minutes. Expensive parking
2.6 .96
1.5 .86
2.2 1.00
1.7 .96
47. Family with young children in suburb
of a metropolis. 1 km to a grocery store,
public transport to the city center leaves 2-3
times/hour during daytime and evening.
3.8 .78
3.0 .88
3.9 .87
3.3 1.05
48. Family with children over 12
years old in a suburb of a metropolis.
1 km to a grocery store, public transport
to the city center leaves 2-3 times/hour
during day time and evening
3.6 .83
2.8 .89
3.6 .87
3.1 1.18
49. Family with young children in a small
town (1 km to a grocery store, bus service
once per hour. But post office, school,
employment, stores, community hall and
railroad station within 3 km.)
4.2 .75
3.8 .90
4.1 .71
3.9 1.02
50. Family with children over 12 years
in a small town. (1 km to a grocery
store, bus service once per hour. But
post office, school, employment, stores,
community hall and railroad station
within 3 km.
4.2 .75
3.7 .88
3.8 .88
3.4 .91
51. Family with young children in a rural
area. A grocery store within 2 km, a few bus
services per day to the nearest city
4.7 .49
4.6 .58
4.7 .50
4.6 .83
52. Family with children over 12 years old
in a rural area. A grocery store within 2 km,
a few bus services per day to the nearest city
4.7 .57
4.6 .63
4.7 .64
4.6 .88
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The task of the respondents was to indicate the degree to which each of
these eight families would need a car. There were five response alternatives
to choose between. The extremes were “To have a car is more trouble than
enjoyment and utility“ (coded “1“) and “To have a car is an absolute necessity“ (coded 5). The middle alternative read “A car is an asset, but not a
necessity“ (coded 3). Thus, in this section, the response means can theoretically range from 1 to 5, and a higher score means a higher need, in the
view of the respondents.
This section turned out to be experienced as more difficult than the rest
of the questionnaire, which was understandable. Four of the adolescents
(equal number car-owners and car-less) did not fill out this part of the
questionnaire.
The response means for the four categories of respondents are shown in
Table 4.6 Generally, the respondents judged the need for a car to be
slightly higher for families with young children than for families with teenagers, but the main differences were in regard to the settings. For an inner-city family, the response means ranged from 1.5 to 2.8. In other words,
most of the respondents, who were inner-city people themselves, felt that a
car was at best “an asset, but not a necessity“ but equally often “more trouble than enjoyment and utility“ for people in their own situation. The carowners, not surprisingly, consistently gave the higher “need“-scores (mean
responses 2.2-2.8).
The car-needs of families in suburbs and in small towns were not judged
to be vastly different. The 16 means (for four family types and by four
categories of respondents) ranged from 3.1 to 4.2. Thus, for these families
a car was judged to be at least an asset, and maybe a necessity. As above,
this is according to the average responses, which reflects the view of the
respondents as a group. Some individual respondents, of course, made
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more extreme responses. Again, car-owners generally gave higher car-need
scores than the car-less parents and their children.
For families in rural areas, the response means had small range from 4.6
to 4.7, reflecting a general judgement that a car is absolutely necessary for
rural families. Here, there was no difference between car-owners and the
car-less.
4.7. “Younger teenagers on their own“
The last page of the questionnaire was headed “Younger teenagers (13-14
yrs) on their own“. Its introductory paragraph read:
When children grow up and become teenagers it is natural that they want to do things
on their own. But obviously there are also risks involved. If you have younger teenagers in mind, at the age of 13-14, what do you think they should be allowed to do,
and what should they not be allowed to? Check the square that best agrees with your
opinion.
The response alternatives were again three: “Ought they not be allowed to
do“ (scored 1); “Doubtful“ (scored 2) and “Of course they are allowed to“
(scored 3).
The first four items (Table 4.7) concerned using the subway, in different
circumstances: “Going to school and home again“; “in their leisure time, in
daytime“; “in the evening, to around 9 p.m.“; and “in night time, to midnight“.
The next four items concerned going by bus (other than school bus), and
covered the corresponding situations: “Going to school and home again“;
“in their leisure time, in day time“; “in the evening, to around 9 p.m.“; and
“in night time, to midnight“.
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The response patterns for subways and buses were very similar (Table
4.7). Almost all parents and children judged it perfectly acceptable for the
young teenagers to use these modes of public transport in daytime (mean
scores 2.9–3.0). Most parents (mean scores 2.4) and even more of their
children (mean scores 2.6-2.9) also judged it acceptable to 9 p.m. The carless children were the most liberal. Being out later, perhaps to midnight,
brought very different responses: For the parents, the mean responses
ranged from 1.3 to 1.5 (”not allowable” or at most ”doubtful”), while their
children's mean responses were 1.9-2.1, (“doubtful“).
The following two items were similarly worded, but concerned different
pedestrian situations, first: “Walk home from subway, local train or bus
rather late, around 9 p.m., on lighted city streets, about 5-10 min walk.“
and then the same wording, except “empty parkways“ instead of “lighted
city streets“. The difference between “lighted city streets“ and “empty
parkways“ made a big difference in responses. While parents were likely to
accept the former (means 2.4 to 2.5), they were quite negative to the later
(1.7-1.6). There was little difference between car-owning and car-less parents, but their children generally had more liberal views, although with a
similar distinction between city streets and parkways.
The last two items made a similar type of contrast, “Walk home from a
friend a Saturday night (around 10 p.m.) on city streets with many Saturday-happy people, 20-30 minute walk“. The last item was the same, except
with “empty parkways“. Again, city streets were more acceptable for the
respondents. The parents' mean scores were 1.9 to 1.6 for city streets, and
1.3-1.2 for parkways.
The car-owning parents responded in a little more liberal direction than
the car-less, which was against our expectations. However, the children
were again considerable more liberal.
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To summarize the response patterns in this section in regard to differences between the respondents, the main finding is that the children were
more liberal than their parents were. Many of the children actually were of
the age asked about in the questionnaire, 13-14 years old. Apparently, they
wanted more freedom than their parents were ready to allow. Also in the
pilot study, the young respondents answered in a more liberal manner than
the middle-aged.
The hypothesis that car-owning parents would be more restrictive about
letting their children use the public transport and walk home was not supported by the data. This is despite that fact that some of the car-owning parents seemed to confirm this hypothesis during the interview, by vividly
describing their own or their children's negative experiences when taking
the subway, and their subsequent rules against this. Apparently these were
isolated instances, when the whole sample was considered. Therefore, with
the questionnaire data at hand, we have to conclude that car-owning and
car-less families were quite equal in their attitudes toward adolescents
freedom to get around by themselves. Of course, we can only make this
conclusion in regard to the residential environment of the respondents,
namely inner city Stockholm, which is a rather unusual setting in that car
travel is a minor travel mode. Most trips are done by other means, mainly
on foot or by public transport.
4.8 Variations in attitudes: the method of analysis
In section 4.1- 4.7 above, the focus of interest was the average view of the
respondents, in respect to the individual items. However, obviously not
everyone answered as the average, and we now turn to the variations in responses, and how they can be explained by the background of the respondents. How are their responses related to their personal characteristics like
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Table 4.7 Means and standard deviations for parents and children by car-owning
category on the items about ”Younger teenagers on their own”. Response alternatives (1=Ought they not be allowed to do; 2=Doubtful; 3=Of course are they allowed to)
Parents____________
Children___________
Car-owners Car-less
(N = 51)
(N=42)
M sd
M sd
Car-owners
(N = 34)
M sd
Car-less
(N= 37)
M sd
53. Go by subway on their
own to school
2.9 .23
3.0 .21
3.0 0.0
3.0 0.0
54. Go by subway on their
own in their leisure time
2.9 .23
2.9 .26
3.0 0.0
3.0 0.0
55. Go by subway on their
own in the evening, to
around 9 p.m.
2.4 .70
2.4 .66
2.6 .64
2.9 .35
56. Go by subway on their
own in the night, to around
midnight
1.4 .53
1.3 .52
1.9 .73
2.0 .72
57. Go by bus on their
own to school
3.0 .14
3.0 .15
3.0 .17
3.0 0.0
58. Go by bus on their
own in their leisure time
3.0 .14
2.9 .34
3.0 0.0
3.0 0.0
59. Go by bus on their own in the
evening, to around 9 p.m.
2.5 .67
2.6 .63
2.8 .49
2.8 .48
60. Go by bus on their own
in the night, to around midnight
1.5 .64
1.4 .59
2.1 .79
2.0 .71
61. Walk home on their own
from the subway rather late,
around 9 p.m., on lighted city
street, about 5-10 min walk
2.4 .66
2.5 .66
2.7 .52
2.8 .58
62. Walk home on their own
from the subway rather late,
around 9 p.m., on empty
parkways, about 5-10 min walk
1.7 .71
1.6 57
2.1 .71
2.0 .77
63.Walk home on their own, from
a friend, a Saturday evening
(around 10pm) with many
Saturday-happy people,
20-30 min walk
1.9 .76
1.6 .75
2.4 .73
2.3 .79
64. Walk home on their own, from 1.3 .47
a friend, a Saturday evening
(around 10pm) on empty
parkways, 20-30 min walk
1.2 .38
1.7 .75
1.8 .78
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car-ownership, gender, age and education? An easy way to investigate this
is by Pearson correlations, or “r“,
In the tables above, the matter of car-ownership was simplified in that
families with one and two cars were considered as one category. In the correlations, the full range of the variable “car-ownership“ was utilized, namely 0, 1 or 2 cars. The respondents' age was coded by birth year, and this
was used in the correlations. Obviously, a later (higher numbered) birth
year means a younger age. All but a few parents were born between 1945
and 1965. The birth year range for their children naturally was narrower,
from 1983-1988, with 80 percent born 1985-1986. With this narrow age
variation, we did not expect to find correlations with age, for the children.
For both parents and children, males were coded “1“, females “2“. This
means that a positive correlation indicates that females in general have a
higher score, men a lower. Education was coded from 1 to 4, according to
the following: 1=compulsory school, 9 yrs; 2=high school, 11-12 yrs; 3=
college or university without a degree; 4= university degree.
To investigate the correlations with background variables item by item
would yield a bewildering number of correlations. In addition, interpretation would have been risky, since there is the matter of limited reliability
when individual items are considered, as previously noted. Therefore, the
responses on the several items were combined into scales, measuring each
respondent's more generalized attitude in wider dimensions.
With a few exceptions, all questionnaire items under each heading were
combined into one scale. Each respondent's answers were scored on each
item, and combined into a total score for each heading, which became a
scale measuring an attitude dimension. The total scores were used in the
further investigation of correlations with background variables.
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All attitude dimensions were constructed in a pro-automobile direction.
In other words, the scales were constructed to make a higher score indicate
a more pro-car attitude, and a lower score indicate a more critical attitude
toward cars and car-usage. For items like “if you neither have a car nor a
driver's licence, you really become stuck“, where an agreement indicates a
pro-car attitude, the coded value of the response (1= “not true at all“; 2=
“partly true“; 3=“precisely true“) was added to the scale. For items like “If
there is no car in the family, children learn better to get around by themselves“ in which an agreement indicates a critical attitude or a drawback
with car use, the coded value of the responses was instead subtracted. If
there were many critical statements in a section, the total score often became negative. However, this causes no problem when computing correlations.
From the first page, a dimension of “Cars for enhancing quality of life“
was constructed, from items #2 to #8, and #11. Item # 1 was not utilized,
due to its ambiguous nature. (#2, #3, #8 were added, #4, #5, #6, #7, #11
were subtracted. Thus the highest possible score was +4, the lowest possible score -12, which gives a theoretical range -12– +4.)
Items #9 and #10 were used together with #43 to construct a dimension
(scale) named “Cars as a social status provider”. (#9 and #43 added, #10
subtracted, which gives the theoretical range -1 – +5)
The second page was divided into two sections, local and global environment. Inter-correlations revealed that they could be combined to just
one dimension, generally dealing with the impact of cars on the environment. All items but #17 were used in the scale. #17 was excluded because
this item dealt with the car industry rather than with cars per se. Because
car traffic so often is discussed as an environmental problem, it is a bit difficult to conceive of a scale on this topic as a pro-car dimension, and to
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name it accordingly. The somewhat awkward name became “Cars as OK
for the environment“. A highly negative score indicates that the respondent
thinks that cars create severe environmental problems, while a less negative
score indicates that the respondent thinks that cars do not create particularly
important environmental problems. (#14, #16, #20 were added, #12, #13,
#15, #18, #19, #21 were subtracted. Theoretical range: -15 – +3.)
From the third page of the questionnaire, all items were used, to construct a scale named “Pro-car traffic policy“. (#22, #25, #27, #31 were added, #23, #24, #26, #28, #29, #30 were subtracted. Theoretical range: -14 –
+6)
Table 4.8 Ranges, means and standard deviations of total scores, on the attitude
dimensions for parents (N= 93) and children (N= 71)
Scale
Range
Mean
sd
Cars for enhancing quality of life
Parents
-12 – +3
-6.8
3.1
Children
-12 – -1
-8.0
2.6
Cars as OK for the environment
Parents
Children
-14 – +1
-15 – -1
-8.1
-7.2
3.4
3.2
Pro-car traffic policy
Parents
Children
-13 – +6
-13 – +3
-5.6
-4.7
4.0
3.5
Family car as an asset for children
Parents
Children
-4 – +15
-5 – +12
3.3
3.1
3.9
4.0
Car as a social status provider
Parents
Children
-1 – +3
-1 – +4
0.8
0.5
0.8
0.9
Car need by area type
Parents
Children
+18 – +40
+ 8 – + 37
28.5
27.7
4.2
5.0
Adolescent freedom allowance
Parents
Children
+17 – +34
+ 21 – +36
26.7
30.4
3.2
3.9
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The fourth page, headed “The car in families with children“, was like the
first in dealing with life quality aspects, but with children in focus. Its dimension was named “Family car as an asset for children“. Two items
were excluded from the scale: #43 because it was used in the scale “Car as
a social status provider“, and #41, “In our family there is no risk that children will be chauffeured too much“ because it was not obvious what an
agreement would indicate – a pro-car or a car-critical attitude? Furthermore, its applicability would be quite different in a car-owning and car-less
family. (Items #32, #34, #36, #37, #38, #42, #44 were added, #33, #35,
#39, #40 were subtracted. Theoretical range: -5 – +17)
On page 5, which contained items dealing with families' car needs in different settings, all items were similarly constructed, with response alternatives from 1 to 5. A higher score consistently indicated a higher need for a
car, according to the respondent. Here, all the scores were simply added, to
create a total score on the scale named “Car need by area type“. (Theoretical range: +8–+40)
Also on the last page, all the items were scored in the same direction. A
higher score indicated that the respondent would allow a teenager more
freedom. Again, all the scores could be added, to create a total scale of
“Adolescent freedom allowance“. However, it should be noted that this
scale differs from the others, since it does not deal with an issue for or
against automobiles. (Theoretical range: +12– +36)
In Table 4.8, measurement parameters of the total scores are shown for
each dimension, namely: The lowest and highest total score that any respondent obtained (range), and the means and standard deviations of the total
scores. If we compare with the theoretical ranges, we find that almost the
whole theoretical ranges of the scales were utilized.
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4.9 Variations in parental attitudes
In Table 4.9, the correlations between the parents' attitude dimensions and
their personal characteristics are shown. As we could guess from the item
analyses, there are positive correlations with car-ownership. In other words,
the more cars parents have in their household, the more positive they are to
cars. This is true for five of the seven dimensions, namely “Cars for enhancing quality of life“, “Cars as OK for the environment“, “Pro-car traffic policy“, “Family car as an asset for children“ and “Car need by area type“.
(The exceptions are “Car as a status provider“, and “Adolescent freedom
allowance“, of which the latter is not about cars.) Of course, the number of
cars is not a personal characteristic of the same kind as gender and age,
since it is entirely possible to buy and sell cars and thereby change one's
car-owning status at will. It is reasonable to argue that parents who have a
positive attitude to cars have chosen to have one or two cars, on this very
basis. On the other hand, we cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that the
fact of owning a car will influence a person's view on car-related matters.
For example, via motor organizations, car-owners might well be more exposed to view-points belittling environmental problems caused by cars, and
negative experiences related to the costs and frustrations of car-usage might
influence car-owners to endorse pro-car policies.
Although we can not determine the direction of the influence, from Table
4.9, we can note that the car-owning parents more than the car-less maintain that a car enhances their quality of life and that cars are not very destructive to the environment. Car-owners are also more in favor of pro-car
policies, and tend to think that having a car is an asset for their children.
They are also more convinced that other people than themselves need a car,
significantly more than the car-less. Yet the car-owners do not think that
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they gain in social status by having a car, so this does not appear to be a
motivation (at least in this sample).
In relation to gender and age, there is not the same kind of doubt about
the causal direction, since no one's age or gender will change because of his
or her attitudes. Here we find no significant correlation with gender, and
only one significant correlation with birth-year. The negative correlation
between birth year and “Car as a quality of life enhancer“ indicates that older parents are more convinced that having a car will enhance their quality
of life. This finding agrees with unpublished results of a Swedish survey,
namely that younger respondents (born in the 60's or 70's) were less inclined than respondents born in 40's to think that having a car of their own
was very important for themselves (SIFO, 1997; also reported in Sandqvist,
1999)
The correlations with education were generally negative, and significant
in five of the six car-related dimensions, the exception being “Cars are OK
for the environment“. In other words, the more educated among the parents
were less convinced that cars would enhance the quality of life, in general
and for children. They also less often judged that cars were necessary for
families in different areas, and less often than parents with a short education felt that cars could provide social status.
Table 4.9 Correlations between dimension of parents' attitudes and their personal
characteristics, i. e. number of cars (0,1,2), gender, birth year and education
(N=93) (abbreviated dimension names)
Number of
Gender
Attitude dimension
cars
Quality of life enhancer
+.55***
-.11
OK for the environment
+.46***
-.15
Pro-car policies
+.38***
-.16
Asset for children
+.37***
-.09
Status provider
-.12
-.08
Car need by area
+.42****
-.02
Freedom allowance
+.02
-.10
* p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 **** p < .0001
53
Birth-year
Education
-.22*
+.05
+.00
-.10
+.00
+.02
+.11
-.20*
-.06
-.29**
-.25*
-.24*
-.28**
+.15
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4.10 Variations in children’s attitudes
We have seen that the children's opinions did not entirely coincide with
their parents. How are children's attitudes related to their background?
In respect to car-ownership, the children are in different situation than
their parents. It is their parents, not themselves, who have decided on carownership. In children's experiences when growing up, both their parents'
views about cars, and their own direct experiences in having or not having
a car, are potentially relevant factors in shaping their views and attitudes.
We have already noted that car-owning parents have more pro-car views
than car-less parents do. What is the situation in respect to their children?
In Table 4.10, which shows the correlations between the attitude dimensions and car-ownership for the children, we find significant variables in
three of the six car-related dimensions. These are “car as quality of life enhancers“, “Family cars as an asset for children“ and “Car need by area“. A
common denominator between these is that they relate to the usefulness of
cars. Of these, the correlation with “family car as an asset for children”
stands out by its strength. This is the only dimension in which the correlation with car-ownership is greater for children than for their parents. Even
more than their parents, the car-owning children think a car in the family is
an asset for the children in the family, while their car-less counterparts disagree. Thus, on this point, which very much concern themselves, the carless and car-owning children have widely divergent views, and each side is
loyal to their own situation.
For their parents, there were no significant correlations with gender, but
for the children we find that girls are more critical of cars, particularly in
respect to the environment.
The correlations with the children's birth-years are generally positive,
although they fail to reach significance. However, the direction would indi54
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cate that the older children (15-16 years) are more car-critical than the
younger (12-13 years).
With children of this age, their own education is not a meaningful variable, because they are still in school. However, the parents' education tells
us something about the children's family background, particularly in regard
to the intellectual standard of the home. If parents have a higher education,
generally their children are exposed to more books and newspapers. In Table 4.10, the correlations between the children's attitudes to cars and their
parents' education are negative, in all six dimensions. (Because the number
of children, and the number of fathers and number of mothers taken separately, are fewer than the number of parents in Table 4.9, correlations need
to be higher in order to reach statistical significance.) Thus, children with
more educated parents are more critical of cars than children with less educated parents. As we have seen, this is also the case with their parents. In at
least two dimensions (“Cars as OK for the environment“, “Pro-car policies”), it seems as if the parents' education is more important for shaping
their children's attitudes, than for shaping the parents' own.
Table 4.10 Correlations between dimension of children’s' attitudes and their family and personal characteristics, i. e. number of cars (0,1 or 2), gender, birth year
and father's and mother's education (N=71)
Mother's
Number of Gender Birth-year Father's
Education education
cars
(N=49)
(N=66)
Attitude dimension
(N=71)
(N=71) (N=71)
Quality of life enhancer +.26*
-.23
+.16
-.25
-.13
OK for the environment +.07
-.34**
+.21
-.35*
-.26*
Pro-car policies
+.09
-.15
+.12
-.32*
-.36**
Asset for children
+.49****
-.06
+.04
-.30*
-.08
Status provider
+.12
-.23
+.20
-.21
-.02
Car need by area
+.34**
-.00
+.16
-.20
+.02
Freedom allowance
-.04
-.11
+.09
+.08
+.20
* p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 **** p < .0001
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4.11 Correlations between parents' and their children's
attitudes
To what extent are parents' and children's attitudes related within the same
family? In Table 4.12, the correlations between parents' and their own
children's scores are shown. For children with single parents, there were
questionnaire data only for this parent, whose scores, of course, then were
used in the correlations with their children's attitudes. For children with
two parents, there were questionnaire data for two parents, who did not necessarily agree. With two parents, the average between them was used to
compute the “parental couple's“ attitude, which was correlated with their
children's.
The means on the attitude dimensions for the parents (or parental couples) and children in the car-owning categories are displayed in Table 4.11.
Generally this table gives the same information as Table 4.9 and Table 4.10
in respect to the correlation with car-ownership: Car-owning parents are
more pro-car than car-less parents are. Car-owning and car-less children
differ mainly in respect to the dimension ”Family car as an asset for children”.
Table 4.11 Means of attitude scales for car owning and car-less parents/parental
couples and children
Parents____________ Children___________
Car-owners Car-less Car-owners Car-less
Attitude dimension
(N=29)
(N=28)
(N=34)
(N=37)
Cars for enhancing quality of life
-5.1
-8.8
-7.1
-8.8
Cars as OK for the environment
-6.5
-10.0
-6.8
-7.6
Pro-car traffic policies
-4.4
-7.4
-4.1
-5.2
Family car as an asset for children
4.8
1.8
5.3
1.0
Car as a social status provider
0.8
0.9
0.6
0.4
Car need by area type
30.7
26.0
29.4
26.1
Adolescent freedom allowance
26.7
26.9
30.2
30.5
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As we have seen, there were sometimes correlations between the number
of cars and attitudes to cars, for both parents and children. When this is the
case, correlation between parents' and children's attitudes can arise because
both are correlated with car-ownership. Therefore, in Table 4.12, parentchild correlations are presented both for the whole sample, and for carowners and car-less families separately. In the latter cases, parent-child
correlations can not be ascribed to similar attitudes due to car-ownership.
In Table 4.12, three dimensions stand out for their high correlations
between parents and children, namely “Cars for enhancing quality of life“,
“Family car as an asset for children“, and “Adolescent freedom allowance“. For these dimensions, the correlations are high also within the carowning categories. Perhaps a common denominator here is the fact that the
dimensions deal with issues directly related to family life. In contrast, environmental issues and traffic policy are more abstract and distant, and here
we see no parent-child correlations. Although the dimension “Car need by
area type“ also deals with families, it mainly concerns families living in
other area types than their own.
As we have seen in Table 4.1 and Table 4.11, car-owner children were
less convinced than their parents of the ability of cars to enhance quality of
life in general (particularly #3, #6, #8, #11). The fact that car-owning children had a more critical attitude to cars in general (aside from cars in family
with children), apparently does not mean that they were not affected by
their parents' attitudes, as shown in Table 4.12. What the combined information in the tables say, is that when car-owning parents have a particularly positive attitude to cars in comparison with other car-owning parents,
their children will similarly be more positive to cars than other car-owning
children, although usually less positive than their parents.
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Also the car-less children generally agreed with their own parents when
the issue was the value of cars for enhancing the quality of life, and also
when the issue was cars as an asset for families with children.
Table 4.12 Correlations between parents' and their children's attitudes, for the
total sample and by car-owning category.
Total
Car-owners Carsample
less
Attitude dimension
N=71
N=34
N=37
Cars for enhancing quality of life
.53****
.44**
46**
Cars as OK for the environment
.13
.09
.05
Pro-car traffic policies
.24
.18
.32
Family car as an asset for children
.58****
.43*
.54***
Car as a social status provider
.10
.38*
-.08
Car need by area type
.31*
.13
.16
Adolescent freedom allowance
.33**
.40*
.26
* p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001 **** p < .0001
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4.12 Discussion and conclusions
In general, the respondents seem to have a quite nuanced view of cars, their
advantages and problems. In particular, there seemed to be a widespread
view that cars are very useful, but also that they are often used too much.
To curtail the use of cars, planning for car-free local environments seemed
to be a more attractive approach than charging motorists.
It is not very surprising that car-owning parents maintained more pro-car
attitudes than the car-less parents did, and that car-ownership was the personal characteristic with strongest correlation with attitudes. The second
most important correlate with the attitude dimensions was education, with
the more educated being more critical towards cars. For the children, their
parents’ education generally was as important for their attitudes toward
cars as their family’s car-ownership. What are the implications of the more
educated being more critical to cars? Are they in the forefront of a general
attitude change toward more critical views of cars leading to a behavioral
change, or is it simply a matter of the educated being ”politically correct”
in what they say, while at the same time using cars as much as before, or
more?
An important finding is that car-less children seemed not to miss a family car. In particular, they were the least convinced (of the four categories
car-owning and car-less parents, car-owning and car-less children) that a
family car is important for children, and that car-ownership helps in raising
a person's social status. The latter finding is particularly interesting, since
their parents were the most likely to think that car-ownership has a positive
bearing on social status. Most likely, the parents and children live in different social environments, and the parents’ views of cars as a status provider
can be influenced of the situation when they grew up. In any case, the
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situation differs from the observed by Grahn (1995) in a Stockholm suburb,
in which an interviewed teen-age girl felt very bothered and painfully different from her classmates, because her family did not own a car.
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5. Children’s experiences
5.1 Qualitative and quantitative data
During the interview, the information was obtained in a qualitative form.
Afterwards, the records were used to code quantitative variables. Inevitable, however, some of the richness of the qualitative information was lost
in the quantification process. In this section, both the qualitative and the
quantitative results will be reported. The former will be presented in a narrated form, the latter in simple frequency tables, with separate columns for
the car-less and the car-owning children.
5.2 Getting to school
Most of the children lived within 1000 m from their school, as evidenced
by Table 5.1.
Table 5.1. Distance to school, by car-ownership
Distance to school
Car- less
Car- owners
f
%
f
%
(1) Less than 500 m
9
24.3
7
20.6
(2) 500-1000 m
16
43.2
20
58.8
(3) 1000-1500 m
5
13.5
3
8.8
(4) 1500-2000 m
5
13.5
3
8.8
(5) 2000-3000 m
2
5.4
0
0
(6) 3000-4000m
0
0
1
2.9
(7) More than 4000 m
0
0
0
0
Total
37
100% 34
100%
This amounts to a ten-minute walk, and it is no wonder that most of the
children walked to school, as a rule. A few children with a longer way to
school usually went by bus, always the ordinary city buses, since there are
no school buses in inner city Stockholm. With so short distances to school,
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it is hardly surprising that car-rides with parents were rare, even when the
family had a car. For none of the children, car-rides to school with a parent
had occurred more than five times during the last year (Table 5.2), and almost exclusively among the car-owners. The one car-less child who had
been driven to school had caught the opportunity once when his mother
had borrowed her parents' car.
However, the real situation is somewhat more complicated. Five children, in three families, lived part-time in a suburb because their parents were
divorced. The children alternated between the parents, spending every
other week in a suburb. For these children, it is only their situation when
living in Södermalm which is included in the tables. However, none of
them was regularly driven to school even when they stayed in the suburb,
but instead usually or always used public transport. Of course, we expect
the situation in regard to distances to school and rides to school to be quite
different for suburban children compared to the inner-city, as the short distances to school are related to the density of the city.
Table 5.2 Car-rides to school, by car-ownership
Frequency of car rides
Car- less
Car-owners
with parent
f
%
f
%
(0) Has never occurred
36
97.3
24
70.6
(1) Has occurred up to
1
2.7
10
29.4
37
100%
34
100%
five times during the last year
Total
A conceivable drawback with the inner-city environment for adolescents is
the existence of “undesirable persons“ and places where they gather. Although it generally is a high status area to live in, in inner city Stockholm
there are always some places where alcoholics or home-less people congregate. To investigate whether this could be a problem, we always asked
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the adolescents if there were places along their way to school that they
particularly liked or disliked. Most of the interviewees could not identify
anything in particular; they took their daily trip to school for granted without reflecting on good or bad points. A few mentioned greenery or trafficfree short cuts as good points, a few talked about uphill stretches as something they disliked. Only in two cases did we get any of the responses we
had in mind when designing the interview. One girl did not like a particular
place where undesirable persons sometimes were present, another avoided
passing by a hospital mortuary. Thus, the fact that there are occasional encounters with “problem“ people in the city environment did not seem to
weigh heavily on the minds of most of the adolescents. At least they did
not make the association when asked about their route to school.
5.3 Leisure activities
Organized activities in the after-school hours are common ways for children to gain additional experiences and learn special skills. Most of the interviewed children participated in organized leisure activities, and some
had more than one. As we explained in the interview, by “organized activities“ we meant activities with an adult leader, and a set time-period. In this
sample of 71 inner-city children, we found an impressive variety of activities, which are listed below.
•Team sports: Hand ball, football, basket ball, indoor bandy, icebandy, ice-hockey, rowing
•Individual sports: Tennis, table tennis, free diving, horse-back riding, wall-climbing, karate, jujitsu, tai-do, aikido, “self-defense“,
boxing, orientation, aerobics
•Dance and performing arts: Circus school, theater, break-dance,
street dance, hip-hop-dance, jazz-dance, ballet, “dance“
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•Music: choir, violin, piano, percussion, drum, guitar, clarinet,
flute, DJ
•Other: Chess, art&crafts, scouts, confirmation class
Obviously, there are a great variety of interests represented in the sample,
and we must conclude that there are many options to choose from. In Table
5.3, the children’s number of activities is shown, by car-ownership.
Table 5.3 Number of organized activities per child, by car-ownership.
Number of organized
Car- less
Car- owners
activities
f
%
f
%
(0) No organized activity
12
32.4
6
17.6
(1) One organized activity
19
51.4
19
55.9
(2) Two organized activities
6
16.2
7
20.6
(3) Three organized activities
0
0
2
5.9
(4) Four organized activities
0
0
0
0
Total
37
100%
34
100%
We also asked: “Is there something you would like to do, but is not able to
or not allowed to do?” and if there was an affirmative answer, we asked
“Why?” When including this question, we particularly had transportation
problems in mind. For example, horseback riding is a favorite sport among
Swedish adolescent girls. It is also a sport that obviously is not suited to an
inner-city setting, and it was a prime candidate for an interest that was difficult to pursue for the car-less children. In the sample, we found six girls
with horseback riding as an organized activity, of which three had a car in
the family, three had not. They did not all go to the same place, but went to
several different stables, often with public transport. None was entirely dependent on chauffeuring by parents, although one of the girls usually was
picked up by her father, and two sisters went by car with a friend's father.
A few car-less girls had taken riding lessons earlier, but lost interest. None
of the car-less children said that they wished to go horseback riding but
could not, although one of the car-owners said so. Her parents, however,
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had decided it was too expensive. Thus, for horsemanship, car-ownership
is not a decisive factor, although sometimes the car-less become dependent
on friends.
Although it was quite exceptional for the children to answer “Yes“ to the
question about unfulfilled wishes, there were some other cases: Not being
good enough to make the team, having a disability of some sort, or allergy
in the family, when “our“ child wanted a dog or a cat. None mentioned
transport problems. However, in two cases single mothers reported they
had bought a car in order for their son to practice ice hockey in a suburb,
because the inner city teams would not take them in. Yet in one of these
cases, the boy had already given up ice hockey, but the car remained in the
family anyway, and the mother now had other reasons for keeping it.
An important reason why transport was not a big issue is that many or
most of the activities were within walking distance. In respect to the particular activities, in 28 cases the adolescent always walked. In ten additional
cases, walking was an option, which was used alternatively with the bicycle, bus or subway. In one further case, the child went by inlines or by bus.
Public transport as the only travel mode applied to 15 cases, quite equally
divided between always subway, always bus, and bus or subway.
In three activities, the alternatives in use were public transport or car ride
with an adult. Only in regard to eight activities, was car ride the only option
in use. The adult in question was the adolescent’s own parent or grandparent, a friend's parent or grandparent, or a sports coach. As the listing above
refers to specific activities, the numbers can not be directly compared to Table 5.4, which has the children as a unit.
However, the listing above refers to the scheduled weekly activities. Particularly in regard to team sports, this underrates the role of parents. Team
sports often involve match events, on weekends in a variety of suburbs. For
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inner-city teams, parents with cars seem regularly to be in short supply.
Often such parents would take a full carload of adolescents to the match, but
about half the team would have to go by public transport. Only occasionally
would they be escorted by a parent. In the interviews, an exceptional car-less
parent would complain about not being able to watch his/her child when
playing in a match, while other car-less parents maintained that there is
always a way to get there by public transport, when one really wants to.
As we can see in Table 5.3, a considerable number of children did not
have any organized activity in their leisure time. Whether they did or not,
we asked if there was something else that they did in their free time. However, the answers to this question seemed quite unreliable. Some children
reported activities, some did not, although the latter's responses to subsequent questions about how they had spent their last week-end revealed that
they might be as much involved in self-initiated activities. Therefore, we
refrain from reporting the number of children with self-initiated activities,
but instead report some of the types of activities that we heard about. In two
cases, both boys with single mothers, the boys were involved in activities
requiring organizing a large peer group. In one case, this was their own
football team. They had regular practices and arranged matches with other
teams, coaching themselves. In the other case, they had their “own business“, creating computer games which they sold to peers and younger children. At least they had earned enough money to spend on a “business lunch“
at Macdonald’s.
Other children also earned money, by distributing leaflet advertisements.
One boy had a weekly shopping chore for a grandparent. Of course, in these
cases it is debatable if it is “leisure“ activities. Caring for pets was a common hobby among girls, which also involves a regular responsibility. One
girl answered that she did housecleaning – it appeared that she was not satis-
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fied with her parents' orderliness. In a few additional cases, the children did
not mention helping a physically impaired parent, but we would assume they
did, after having visited the family.
In some cases, the adolescents used opportunities for “drop in“ activities,
commercial, in school or in the municipal youth centers. In-line skating;
making clothes and accessories for “live“ events; aerobics, computer club,
bowling, table tennis, swimming and badminton were some of these. In such
activities there are adults in charge, but no scheduled times.
The most commonly mentioned unscheduled activities, however, were
playing computer games, going shopping, going to the movies. For many,
just spending time with their friends seemed very important. Informal
sports activities, like in-lines, jogging, bicycling, or playing football (without a team set-up) was also mentioned. Only two children mentioned
playing traditional games with the children on the block (Sw: med “gårdsungarna“), which in earlier generations was considered an ordinary, commonplace activity. Both these cases involved children without a family car,
who stayed home most of the summer.
As is clear from the above, for almost all of the children, their self-initiated, unscheduled activities involved little need for transport. However,
two cases were exceptions, and both involved boys with their car-owning
fathers as drivers. One rode go-carts, the other built model airplanes with
motors, which can only be flown at particular places.
5.4 Independence in activities and week-ends
“Independence“ in relation to developing children, is a term with many meanings. One aspect of learning to function as an adult must certainly be to
get around by oneself. Among other things, this involves taking the initiative
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to get going, learning to calculate the appropriate time requirement, and
finding the way.
Table 5.4 indicates how the children went to their activities, in respect to
the degree of independence. The form of independence that is in focus here,
is not being dependent on the chauffeuring services of an adult. When an
adult does the driving, often it is the adult who reminds the child about the
time to leave, and it is him/her who paces the time. The child is hardly free
to decide on the spot to skip the activity one that occasion. Or if the adult at
times can not do the chauffeuring, the child might have to give up the activity on that occasion.
As we can see, none of the children was totally dependent on chauffeuring services for more than one organized activity, and only 9 children of the
71 were dependent on this for one organized activity. For 11 children, a ride
seemed a convenience rather than a necessity, since they were able and allowed to go by themselves, even if they often got a ride. As many as 50
children never got a ride to regular activities. Perhaps it should be noted that
this includes the 18 children who did not participate in an organized activity.
Although these children might or might not practice getting to particular
point by themselves, at least they did not experience being taken there.
Table 5.4. Degree of independence for activities
Degree of independence
Car- less
f
%
0
0
(1) Always gets a ride with parent or other adult,
to more than one activity
(2) Always gets a ride with parent or other adult,
3
to a certain activity (or always ride home)
(3) Sometimes gets a ride, but can go independently 3
(4) Never gets a ride, not to any activity
31
Total
37
68
8.1
Car- owners
f
%
0
0
6
8.1
8
83.8 20
100% 34
17.6
23.5
58.8
100%
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In any case, we can conclude that the leisure activities of these inner-city
adolescents were little dependent on adult car-drivers. We are very interested in being able to compare this with situation for suburban children.
Table 5.5. The adolescents’ degree of independent travel during the last
two week-ends
Travel modes during
Car- less
Car- owners
the two latest week-ends
f
%
f
%
(0) No trip (other than walking or cycling) 6
16.2
2
5.9
(1) Only Car trip(s) with a parent
0
0
5
14.7
(2) Car trip(s) with a parent + public
1
2.7
0
0
transport trip with a parent
(3) Public transport trip(s) with a
1
2.7
2
5.9
parent
(4) Public transport trip(s) without a
4
10.8
13
38.2
parent + car trip with a parent
(5) Public transport trip(s) with a parent + 9
24.3
6
17.6
public transport trip(s) without a parent
(6) All trip were independent (public
16
43.2
6
17.6
transport without a parent)
Total
37
100% 34
100%
We also asked about activities and travel patterns during the last two weekends. This did not only concern the child's leisure activities, but also family
trips and visiting. The scoring in terms of independence is shown in Table
5.5. Here, only trips other than walking and cycling give “points“ for independence, and the focus therefore is on modes that are typical for longer
distances. Car trips with own parents are considered quite dependent, using
the public transport system on their own as most independent. Some children had made use of several different modes, or used the public transport
system together with a parent, and this was coded with intermediate values.
As we can see in Table 5.5, there is a great deal of overlap between the
car-owning and car-less children, although car trips with a parent is more
common among car-owners, as we would expect. In this context, it is perhaps well to remind the reader about the fact that quite a few children have
a parent in another household which they often visit during weekends. All
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but a few of the children in one-parent families did so, and also a few of
the children in two-parent families had a stepparent and a non-residential
parent. Quite often, the car-owning status of “the other“ parent was other
than the residential parent, which will increase the overlap between the carowning and car-less children. In any case, a great majority of these 12-16
year-olds had used the public transport system on their own during the last
two weekends, even if they had a car in their household.
5.5 Contact with relatives
During the interview, we first made an overview over the kin structure.
Was there a parent to the target child who did not live in the household?
Sisters and brother who lived apart, with the other parent or who had left
home? Where there grandparents, and sisters and brothers to the parents?
After mapping the kin structure, we asked for every kin household, where
they lived, and how often the adolescent had met them during the last year.
Due to the transport perspective in the study, we did not use individual
relatives as the unit, but households. Obviously, a married couple of grandparents will often be visited together. Only households, that our target child
had met during the last year, were then included for questions about distances and contact frequency. However, we put a limit on asking about
eight households, otherwise the interview became too long. When this occurred, we left out the more distant relatives (i.e. distance in terms of kinship relation, not in terms of geography).
Table 5.6 indicates how the children were distributed after the number of
kin households that they had been in contact with. For both car-less and
car-owners children, almost a third reached the maximum of eight. Two
was the lowest number of kin households that a child had met during the
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last year. There is a variation in both categories of car-ownership, but no
significant average difference.
It is sometimes stated that the modern family is isolated, and that kin
relations have lost their importance. However, this was not the result we
obtained3. Instead, many families had very regular kin contacts. Birthdays
were often celebrated with a wider circle. Some had Sunday dinner with
grandparents as a routine. Quite a number of families in our sample spent
their summers together with kin in the country, and Christmas of course
was a prime period for get-togethers. Some adolescents went with an aunt
or uncle and cousin on a yearly ski holiday. In other instances, a grandmother could treat the whole family or just a grandchild and herself, to a
charter vacation at a sunny resort.
Other kin contacts were more occasional: a wedding or a cousin's high
school examination, could bring together kin households which “our“ family saw rarely otherwise. Therefore, the number of kin households seen
during the last year might be overstated in some cases, understated in others, but the number in the sample as a whole should not be affected by such
random fluctuations.
Table 5.6 Number of children by number of kin households seen least year
Total number of kin households
Car- less
Car-owners
f
%
f
%
(0) No Contact with kin household
0
0
0
0
( 1) 1 kin household
0
0
0
0
(2) 2 kin household
1
2.7
0
0
(3) 3 kin household
0
0
4
11.8
(4) 4 kin household
5
13.5
4
11.8
(5) 5 kin household
3
8.1
5
14.7
(6) 6 kin household
12
32.4
5
14.7
(7) 7 kin household
5
13.5
5
14.7
(8) 8 kin household
11
29.7
11
32.4
Total
37
100%
34
100%
3
An international study of families with young children, which included a Stockholm
sample, also found kin networks to be very important (Cochran et al, 1990).
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Although car-owning and car-less children met as many relatives during
the year, perhaps there are differences in how often they see them? In Table 5.7, the number of kin households our adolescents met as frequently as
every month, or about 10 times a year, is shown.
Most of the children were in frequent contact with between one and four
kin households, and this applied to both car-owners and car-less children.
Of course, frequent contact is easier to maintain if the relatives live close
by. In Table 5.8, the number of kin households who live within the inner
city of Stockholm is shown. Reaching any part of the inner city of Stockholm with public transport from Södermalm must be considered easy. The
numbers in Table 5.8 indicate that perhaps the car-less have a little more
kin in the inner city, and perhaps this is even a reason why they get along
without cars. In the next chapter, some of the multivariate analyses will be
devoted to this question.
However, we shall also consider relatives living at a distance. Do the carowners maintain contact with more relatives living at a distance? As the
public transport system has inner city Stockholm as its hub, reaching all
parts of Stockholm county with public transport from Södermalm is quite
feasible and also inexpensive, although services may be infrequent in the
outer areas. Outside Stockholm county, going by the public transport system
is usually more complicated and time-consuming. The number of kin
households that live outside Stockholm County should therefore be a meaningful measure of maintaining contact over a distance.
Most of the children have at least some kin living outside Stockholm
County. However, a third of the car-less have no kin outside this area, but
otherwise there is little difference between the groups. Often grandparents
are considered the most important kin. Table 5.10 and 5.11 give the distances to the maternal and paternal grandparents (if the grandmother and
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grandfather were divorced, only the distance to the grandmother was used
in the coding, unless only the grandfather was alive).
It appears that the car-less more often have the maternal grandmother living close by. In regard to paternal grandparents, the distributions are more
similar over car-owning categories. On the whole, most grandparents on
either side live no father away than in a suburb to Stockholm. For a third of
the adolescents, no paternal grandparent had been present in the network
for the last year. This was usually due to the fact that they were no longer
alive.
Table 5.7 Number of kin households with frequent contact
Number of kin households with
Car- less
frequent contacts
f
%
(0) No kin household with frequent contact 0
0
(1) 1 kin household with frequent contacts 10
27.0
(2) 2 kin households “
6
16.2
(3) 3 kin households “
10
27.0
(4) 4 kin households “
7
18.9
(5) 5 kin households “
3
8.1
(6) 6 kin households “
0
0
(7) 7 kin households “
1
2.7
(8) 8 kin households “
0
0
Total
37
100%
Car-owners
f
%
1
2.9
7
20.6
8
23.5
10
29.4
4
11.8
4
11.8
0
0
0
0
0
0
34
100%
Table 5.8 Number of kin households within inner city Stockholm
Car-owners
Number of kin households
Car- less
in the inner city of Stockholm
f
%
f
%
(0) No kin in the inner city
7
18.9
12
35.3
(1) 1 kin household in inner city
11
29.7
9
26.5
(2) 2 kin households in inner city
11
29.7
9
26.5
(3) 3 kin households in inner city
5
13.5
4
11.8
(4) 4 kin households in inner city
3
8.1
0
0
(5) 5 kin households in inner city
0
0
0
0
Total
37
100%
34
100%
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Table 5.9 Number of kin households outside Stockholm County
Number of kin households
outside Stockholm county
(0) No kin household who live
outside Stockholm county
(1) 1 kin household who live
outside Stockholm county
(2) 2 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
(3) 3 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
(4) 4 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
(5) 5 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
(6) 6 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
(7) 7 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
(8) 8 kin households who live
outside Stockholm county
Total
Car- less
f
%
13
35.1
Car-owners
f
%
6
17.6
5
13.5
8
23.5
7
18.9
10
29.4
3
8.1
4
11.8
4
10.8
3
8.8
2
5.4
2
5.9
3
8.1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
2.9
34
100%
37
100%
Table 5.10 Distance to maternal grandparents
Distance to maternal grandmother
Car- less
(grandfather)
f
%
( 1) Södermalm
10
27.0
(2) Stockholm inner city
2
5.4
(3) In a suburb to Stockholm
18
48.6
(4) Stockholm’s county
0
0
(5) 200 – 500 km away
0
0
(6) 500-100 km away
2
5.4
(7) Outside Sweden
2
5.4
Neither maternal grandparent
3
8.1
is included in network
Total
37
100%
74
Car-owners
f
%
3
8.8
0
0
17
50.0
2
5.9
3
8.8
0
0
1
2.9
8
23.5
34
100%
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Table 5.11 Distance to paternal grandparents
Distance to paternal grandmother
Car-less
(grandfather)
f
%
(1) Södermalm
2
5.4
(2) Stockholm inner city
4
10.8
(3) In a suburb to Stockholm
14
37.8
(4) Stockholm’s county
1
2.7
(5) 200 – 500 km away
3
8.1
(6) 500-100 km away
0
0
(7) Outside Sweden
1
2.7
No paternal grandparent
12
32.4
is included in the network
Total
37
100%
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Car-owners
f
%
2
5.9
2
5.9
12
35.3
1
2.9
5
14.7
1
2.9
0
0
11
32.4
34
100%
5.5 Independent travel to relatives
As was noted in the first chapter, adolescents often have a strained or conflicted relationship with their parents, and the parents can have relationship
troubles of their own. Relatives can provide support and relief to both parent and child in turbulent times. If the adolescent can make up his or her
own decision about visiting grandparents or other relatives, this should be
an asset.
Although we did not explore family problems, we did encounter examples of children who seemed very motivated to spend time with their relatives on their own. One girl frequently went to stay overnight with her sister who had her own apartment in a suburb. One boy often went on a long
bus trip (300 km) stay over the week-end with a cousin, with whom he got
along better than with his brother.
Table 5.12 indicates to what extent the adolescents in our study had
traveled on their own to their relatives. Because the number of possible kin
households varies, this is put in relation to the total number of kin households that were present. “Travel“ is perhaps a misleading word since also
pedestrian ”travel” was counted. However, this is the common term in
transport research.
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As we have seen, most of the interviewees had relatives in the Stockholm area, of which quite a few even lived in Södermalm, at most a few
kilometers away. Table 5.12 shows that almost all of the adolescents had
traveled on their own to at least one kin household. The car-less seemed to
have gone on their own to more of their kin than the car-owners.
Table 5.12 Independent travel to relatives with focus on number of households
Car- owners
Independent travel, number of kin houseCar- less
holds
f
%
f
%
(0) No independent travels to any kin household
3
8.1
2
5.9
(1) independent travel to one kin household
6
16.2
13
38.2
(2) independent travel to two kin households
6
16.2
7
20.5
(3)Independent travel to more than
5
13.5
3
8.8
two, but less than half of the kin households
(4) Independent travel to more than
17
45.9
9
26.5
half of the kin households
Total
37
100% 34
100%
Table 5.13 Independent travel to relatives with focus on distance
Longest independent travel to relatives
Car- less
f
%
(0) No independent trip to kin, not even by walking 3
8.1
(1) Walks independently to some kin
4
10.8
(2) Independent travel to kin in S inner city
4
10.8
(3) Independent travel to kin in suburbs
20
54.1
(4) Independent travel to kin in Stockholm
0
0
County
(5) Independent travel to kin within Sweden
3
8.1
(6) Independent travel to kin outside Sweden
3
8.1
Total
37
100%
Car- owners
f
%
2
5.9
4
11.8
3
8.8
12
35.3
0
0
13
0
34
38.2
0
100%
The distance traveled independently is also a relevant aspect. Surely, to be
able to travel far, if there is a need to do so, is part of adult functioning.
Table 5.13 shows the longest distance that the adolescents had traveled on
their own to visit relatives. For most, the longest distance was to a suburb
of Stockholm. Here, often the 12-16-year-olds could go the whole distance
by themselves, including the walk from the bus or subway stop. For longer
journeys, with interregional trains or buses within Sweden, or with flights
abroad, usually a relative would meet at the other end.
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It appears that the car-owning children particularly often had traveled on
their own within Sweden, outside Stockholm County.
5.6 Travel mode variation
In a setting where there are many possible travel modes, a further aspect of
learning to get around by oneself must be to have experienced a variety of
different travel modes. For this measure of independent travel, the content
of the whole interview was used, and all travel without parents was counted, whether the goal was activities, friends and relatives. Also trips with
the school or a sports team were considered. Walking was not counted, as
we assumed that all our 12-16-year-olds had been able to walk by themselves to school and to some friends, for several years. The following were
counted as separate travel modes: Car travel with other adult than own parent; inlines (used a travel mode, not just as sport); bicycle (ditto); city bus;
long distance bus; subway; commuter train; local train or tramway (“light
rail“); long distance train; passenger boat; and airplane.
Table 5.14 Independent travel, focus on mode variation
Number of different modes of
Car- less
independent travel
f
%
Car- owners
f
%
(0) No independent travel mode(except walking) 0
(1) 1 travel mode
1
(2) 2 different travel modes
4
(3) 3 different travel modes
16
(4) 4 different travel modes
11
(5) 5 different travel modes
5
(6) 6 different travel modes
0
(7) 7 different travel modes
0
Total
37
0
1
9
11
9
3
1
0
34
0
2.7
10.8
43.2
29.7
13.5
0
0
100%
0
2.9
26.5
32.4
26.5
8.8
2.9
0
100%
Table 5.14 shows the variation of travel modes that the adolescents in the
sample had used without their parents. All had made some independent tra-
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vel. Most had used three or four different travel modes in an independent
fashion.
Table 5.15 Total experience of mode variation
All travel mode usage
Car- less
f
%
(0) No travel mode(except walking)
0
0
(1) 1 travel mode
0
0
(2) 2 different travel modes
0
0
(3) 3 different travel modes
0
0
(4) 4 different travel modes
7
18.9
(5) 5 different travel modes
17
45.9
(6) 6 different travel modes
11
29.7
(7) 7 different travel modes
2
5.4
Total
37
100%
Car- owners
f
%
0
0
0
0
0
0
4
11.8
5
14.7
12
35.3
8
23.5
5
14.7
34
100%
From a transport perspective, it is also interesting to get some insight into
their total travel mode experiences. In Table 5.15, also the travel modes on
trips with their parents have been counted, but otherwise the models are
defined as in Table 5.14. Here, it appears that most of the children have
experienced five or six different travel modes, with hardly any difference
between car-owner and car-less children. Again, it will interesting to find
out whether this wide variation in travel mode experiences will be true also
for adolescents outside the inner city of Stockholm.
5.7 Long trips
Long journeys provide children with new experiences. We asked about the
longest trip the child had ever made since age 7, and about the three longest
trips during the last year. In Table 5.16 to 5.19 the destinations of these
four long journeys are reported, in rough categories, according to distance
from inner city Stockholm. Obviously, the average length of the journey
decreases as we move from the longest journey ever, to the longest last
year, and then to the second and third longest last year.
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Table 5.16 The longest journey since age 7
Destination of the longest journey
Car- less
since age 7
f
%
( 1) Within inner city Stockholm
0
0
(2) To a suburb of Stockholm
0
0
(3) Stockholm’s county
0
0
(4) Within 100 km
0
0
(5) Within 300 km
1
2.7
(6) Within Scandinavia
7
18.9
(7) Within Europe
23
62.2
(8) Turkey, Middle east, North Africa 1
2.7
(9) Other continents
5
13.5
Total
37
100%
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Car- owners
f
%
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
19
55.9
0
0
15
44.1
34
100%
Concerning the very longest trip, in Table 5.16, we find that 20 of the 71
adolescents had traveled to other continents. The car-less children had been
to Thailand (4 children) and South Africa; the car-owners had been to
Thailand (2 children), Malaysia (2 children), Japan (2 children), Sri Lanka
(2 children), Senegal (2 children), Kenya, Tanzania, Florida, Brazil and
India. Usually, the destination was a resort area, reached by tourist charter.
As we can see, the car-owner children seemed to have traveled more
widely, but obviously, not by car. Only one of our 12-16 year-olds had
never been outside Sweden, but two more had been on the shortest possible
trip abroad – to Åland (the Finnish islands in the Baltic).
Table 5.17 reports the longest journey during the last year, and again we
find Thailand to be the most common destination, for intercontinental travel. More common as the longest trip, however, are the resorts in Southern
Europe, Canary Islands, Mallorca, Spain, and Cyprus. Again, charter is the
main travel mode. However, England, and particularly London, are other
common destinations, which also are always reached by air. Again, for the
car-owning children the longest trip last year more often was made by air
than for the car-less. For the car-less children, the longest journey last year
more often had been made within Scandinavia, at distances suited for cartravel.
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The second longest journey during the last year had mostly been within
Scandinavia, with the 100-300 km range the most common. However, two
children had made two intercontinental journeys within the last year.
Table 5.17 The longest journey last year
Destination of the longest
Car- less
journey last year
f
%
( 1) Within inner city Stockholm
0
0
(2) To a suburb of Stockholm
0
0
(3) Stockholm’s county
0
0
(4) Within 100 km
7
18.9
(5) Within 300 km
11
29.7
(6) Within Scandinavia
6
16.2
(7) Within Europe
10
27.0
(8) Turkey, Middle east, North Africa 0
0
(9) Other continents
3
8.1
Total
37
100%
Car- owners
f
%
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
2.9
5
14.7
2
5.9
18
52.9
1
2.9
7
20.6
34
100%
When we finally turn to the third longest trip last year, Stockholm County
and destinations within 100 km become the most common destinations.
These are distances suited for weekends or day trips, and it is hardly surprising that the third longest trip in a year will be conducted at these distances. When the trip is over 300 km but within Scandinavia, as is quite
common for both the second and the third longest trip, the destination is
often a ski resort.
Table 5.18 The second longest journey last year
Destination of second longest
Car- less
journey last year
f
%
( 1) Within inner city Stockholm
0
0
(2) To a suburb of Stockholm
1
2.7
(3) Stockholm’s county
7
18.9
(4) Within 100 km
14
37.8
(5) Within 300 km
7
18.9
(6) Within Scandinavia
6
16.2
(7) Within Europe
2
5.4
(8) Turkey, Middle east, North Africa
0
0
(9) Other continents
0
0
Total
37
100%
80
Car- owners
f
%
0
0
0
0
1
2.9
8
23.5
12
35.3
6
17.6
5
14.7
0
0
2
5.9
34
100%
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When the destination is another continent, we can be quite certain that the
travel mode is by air. For destinations at shorter ranges, there are alternative modes. Within Sweden, the major alternatives used in this study were
rail and car, with bus and boat less common.
In Table 5.20-5.22 we can see how the travel modes were distributed on
the children. Did some of the children make all their long trips by air, or all
by car? As the four long trips (longest ever, and three longest last year)
were considered, naturally four trips by one mode was the maximum number.
Table 5.19 The third longest journey last year
Destination of third longest
Car- less
journey last year
f
%
( 1) Within inner city Stockholm
0
0
(2) To a suburb of Stockholm
4
10.8
(3) Stockholm’s county
13
35.1
(4) Within 100 km
15
40.5
(5) Within 300 km
0
0
(6) Within Scandinavia
4
10.8
(7) Within Europe
1
2.7
(8) Turkey, Middle east, North Africa 0
0
(9) Other continents
0
0
Total
37
100%
Car- owners
f
%
0
0
0
0
6
17.6
19
55.9
7
20.6
1
2.9
1
2.9
0
0
0
0
34
100%
In table 5.20, we can note that one child had made all of the four long journeys by air. Eleven children had not made any of these journeys by air,
which might mean that they had never traveled by airplane. Comparing carless and car-owning children, we find that most car-less children had made
one journey by air, while most car-owners had made two.
Table 5.20 Number of long journeys made by air, per child
Number of journeys by air
Car- less
Car- owners
f
%
f
%
(0) No trip by air
9
24.3
2
5.9
( 1) 1 trip by air
19
51.4
8
23.5
(2) 2 trips by air
5
13.5
15
44.1
(3) 3 trips by air
4
10.8
8
23.5
(4) 4 trips by air
0
0
1
2.9
Total
37
100% 34
100%
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In respect to rail travel, of course we would expect the car-less to use this
more often than the car-owners. Table 5.21 indicates that this indeed was
the case, as one train journey or more was the rule among the car-less,
while half of the car-owners had made none of their long trips by rail. As
we have seen, however, they did use the public transport system often for
shorter trips. Some of the shorter “long journeys“ were also done with the
local trains in Stockholm County. Occasionally a long journey was performed with a different mode on the return trip, resulting in “half“ a journey
made by rail.
Table 5.22, finally, shows the number of long journeys by car that the
children had experienced. None had made all of their four long journeys by
car, and only two children, both car-less, had made as many as three of
their four journeys by car. In view of the national travel statistics (RVU
1998) which show the car to be a very dominant travel mode, this is quite
surprising. The travel patterns of these inner-city adolescents seem to be
quite different from the national norm. Again, we look forward towards
being able to make a comparison with suburban children, to be able to better understand to role of the inner city setting in shaping the travel experiences of adolescents.
Table 5.21 Number of long journeys by rail, per child
Number of journeys by rail
Car- less
%
f
(0) No rail travel
5
13.5
(0.5) Half the journey by train
0
0
(1) 1 rail road journey
18
48.6
(1.5) One and a half journey by train
2
5.4
(2) 2 rail road journeys
9
24.3
(3) 3 rail road journeys
3
8.1
(4) 4 rail road journeys
0
0
Total
37
100%
Car- owners
%
f
18
52.9
1
2.9
13
38.2
0
0
2
5.9
0
0
0
0
34
100%
Although the results presented in Table 5.17-5.22 seem to show considerable differences between the car-less and car-owners in their experiences,
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it is not possible to draw definite conclusions. There are at least to sources
for possible spurious results:
(1) The data are presented for children, as this was the unit of interview. However, because some families have two children in the
project, and long trips often are undertaken as a family affair, the
proper unit for analysis is the family (or one child from each family)
(2) Despite our efforts to make the car-owner and car-less families
equal in terms of number of parents and educational level, we did
not succeed completely. More of the car-less contain single parents
and parents with a short education.
Table 5.22 Number of long journeys by car, per child
Car-owners
Number of journeys by car Car- less
f
%
f
%
(0) No car journey
17
45.9
7
20.6
(0.5) Half the journey by car 5
13.5
2
5.9
(1) 1 car journeys
10
27.0
13
38.2
(2) 2 car journeys
3
8.1
12
35.3
(3) 3 car journeys
2
5.4
0
0
(4) 4 car journeys
0
0
0
0
Total
37
100% 34
100%
In the next chapter, we will address these possible sources of spurious results, by performing multivariate analyses. Furthermore, the results presented in chapter 4 showed that the attitudes of parents differ between car-owners and car-less (and to some extent by other personal characteristics).
Even within these categories, however, there were considerable differences
between parents. In the next chapter we will also investigate the role of parents' attitudes in shaping the experiences of their children.
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6. Family car(s), parents’ attitudes and children’s experiences’
6.1 The multivariate analysis
In chapters 4 and 5, the result of the questionnaires and the interviews were
presented. We could note that there sometimes, but far from always, were
differences related to the existence of a family car. In relation to the questionnaire data, we could also note that parents' education frequently was
related to their attitudes. This finding was quite expected, given the body of
research in social sciences, in which education regularly is found to be an
important variable. In Chapter 5, dealing with the children's experiences as it
was presented to us during the interviews, the importance of parent's education was not analyzed.
In this chapter, the children's experiences (outside their schools and homes) will be analyzed, while simultaneously taking into account several
relevant factors beside car-ownership, namely family type, parents' education, and the parents' attitudes concerning the children's developing experiences.
Prior to performing the multivariate analysis, we made the following reflections: When asking the question “do parents' attitudes to children's development needs influence their children's developing experiences?“ we
must also take into account that these attitudes occur in a setting. Not only
car availability but also family type can be considered “structural“ or “objective“ factors. Obviously, if the family has no car, the opportunities to
give children rides are less than if a family has one or even two cars. Li-
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kewise, a single parent would have less opportunity to drive or escort children to activities than two parents. (In this study, all parents worked.)
Although parents' education is regularly found to be related to attitudes
and child-rearing practices, it not entirely clear why this occurs. We have
already noted (chapter 4) that parents' education sometimes plays a larger
role in forming their children's attitudes to cars than in forming their own
attitudes. We will assume, however, that parents' education influences their
children's experiences in a less direct (or “objective“) fashion than the hard
facts of number of cars or number of parents in the family. We will assume
that parents' education becomes an important variable, at least in part, because it is related to their world views and value systems, and in this respect is another expression of parental attitudes. However, parents' education might also become important because it is related to family income.
To make the multivariate analyses as simple and as informative as possible, we decided to use hierarchical regression analysis. This is an effective way to study the effects of several predictor variables separately and
simultaneously. However, the selection of predictors is not self-evident. In
this case, it seemed most reasonable to start with the structural family variables, namely family type (one or two parents) and number of cars (0, 1, or
2), in a first regression model. In a second step Parents' education and a
more specific attitude variable, based on the questionnaire responses, were
entered into the second regression model, in addition to the two structural
variables. The specific attitude variables were taken from the questionnaire
items that seemed most appropriate in each case.
Some families contained only a mother, a few only a father, while most
contained two parents. Both in regard to parent's attitudes and parent's education, the average value for the two parents was used when there were two
parents.
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6.2 Children's organized leisure time activities
Q u e s t i o n 1. Do ad o l e s c e n t s w i t h o u t c a r ( s ) h a v e fe w e r le i s u r e ac t i vities?
Table 5, in the preceding chapter, provided the bivariate answer to this
question, and it seemed as if the answer to this question might be “yes“.
Although we also found that most children were not chauffeured to their
activities, but went there on their own, we can not dismiss the possibility
that parents' willingness to drive their children might be a factor. Therefore,
the three questionnaire items below were combined into a scale called
“Parents' attitudes to provide children with rides to activities“. A high score
indicates a high willingness or positive attitude to give children rides, a low
score a more negative attitudes.
•“It is important that school age children can get rides by car to
their activities“
• “There is a risk that modern children will get lazy and out of
shape because they so often get rides“ (scored in reverse direction)
• “If there is no car in the family, children learn better to get
around by themselves“ (scored in reverse direction)
Table 6.1 gives the means, standard deviations and ranges for the variables
that were studied in the regression analysis.
Table 6.1 Measurement means, standard deviations and ranges (N=71)
Variable
Mean
SD
range
.99
.75
0-3
Number of activities
-5-+1
Parents' attitudes to provide children -2.62 1.48
with rides to activities
2.83 1.07
1-4
Parents' education
1.62 0.49
1-2
Family type (1 or 2 parents)
0.54 0.63
0-2
Number of cars in household
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The results of the analysis are presented in Table 6.2. In Model 1, both
number of cars and family type are positively related to the number of
activities, which means that children with “more cars“ and “more parents“ also have more activities, although not significantly so. We shall
remember that there were fewer one-parent families with cars in the
study, which means that the difference due to car-ownership could get
overrated in Table 5.3, if also the number of parents in the family is an
important factor.
Table 6. 2 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining
Children's Number of Leisure activities and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model.
Standardized regression coefficients
Variable
Model 1 Model 2
Number of cars
.130
.039
Family type
.146
.064
.412***
Parents' education
.171
Par. att. to provide rides
.048
.208
R2
2
.020
.160**
Adj R
+ p < .10 * p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001 ****p < .0001
In Model 2, however, when Parents' education and Parents' attitude to
provide rides are entered into the regression model, Parents' education
emerges as a highly significant variable, and both the relationship to cars
and family type disappears entirely (there were somewhat more parents
with short education both in single parent and in car-less families). Exactly why the more educated parents' children have more organized activities we can only guess. Among the possibilities are: Educated parents
think it is more important with organized leisure for children; they can
better afford the cost; or the atmosphere in the home make the children
themselves more motivated for organized leisure activities.
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The effect of parent's attitudes to providing rides is in the expected direction, namely that the more positive attitudes, the more activities. However, the effect is far from significant. In another type of setting, suburb or
small town, it might become significant.
We conclude that the answer to the question “ D o ad o l e s c e n t s wi t h o u t
c a r ( s ) ha v e fe w e r l e i s u r e ac t i v i t i e s ? “ i s : “ T h e r e is no e v i d e n c e th a t
a fa m i l y c a r is im p o r t a n t fo r th e n u m b e r o f le i s u r e a c t i v i t i e s . H o w e v e r , p a r e n t s ' e d u c a t i o n is im p o r t a n t . If p a r e n t s h a v e a h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n , t h e i r c h i l d r e n pa r t i c i p a t e in mo r e or g a n i z e d a c t i v i t i e s du r i n g
t h e i r f r e e ti m e a f t e r s c h o o l “ .
6.3 Children's independent mobility experiences
Q u e s t i o n 2. Do ad o l e s c e n t s w i t h o u t c a r ( s ) p r a c t i c e mo r e in d e p e n d e n t
m o b i l i t y , ge t t i n g ar o u n d mo r e w i t h o u t th e he l p of ad u l t s ?
T h e in t e r v i e w c o v e r e d th e c h i l d r e n ' s le i s u r e a c t i v i t i e s , lo n g tr i p s , a n d
c o n t a c t w i t h re l a t i v e s , a n d h o w th e c h i l d r e n t r a v e l e d fo r th o s e e x p e r i e n c e s . “ I n d e p e n d e n t mo b i l i t y “ c a n be lo o k e d up o n in va r i o u s wa y s .
I s it a ma t t e r o f h o w fa r a n a d o l e s c e n t mi g h t tr a v e l a l o n e , h o w o f t e n ,
t o wh o m , or wi t h a pa r t i c u l a r t r a v e l mo d e ?
W e a s s u m e d th a t a l l o f th e a b o v e w e r e re l e v a n t a s p e c t s , a n d th a t a
c o m b i n a t i o n o f th e s e mu s t b e th e mo s t re l i a b l e a n d v a l i d me a s u r e o f
i n d e p e n d e n t mo b i l i t y . Th u s , to ob t a i n a me a s u r e of “Children's Independent Mobility“ six items from the coded interview were used to combine a scale. These were as follows, with sample scoring:
• Rides to school (0–1; 0= Never a car ride; 1=Car rides have occurred.
Scored in reverse direction.)
• Independent travel during the last week-ends (Score 0–6; 1= car trip
with parent(s), 3=public transport with parent(s), 6=all trips without parent)
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• Independent travel to leisure activities (Score 1-4; 1=always gets rides, 4=never gets rides)
• Independent travel to visit relatives, focus on numbers (Score 0–4;
0=no independent visiting, even by foot; 2=independent travel to two
kin households, 4=independent travel to more than half of the kin households)
• Independent travel to visit relatives, focus on distance (Score 0–6;
0=no independent visiting; 3=travels to Stockholm suburbs; 6=travels
abroad)
• Independent travel, mode variation (Score 0–6, number of different
modes used in independent mobility, such as car rides with non-parents, bicycle, local bus, long-distance bus, subway, suburban train,
tramway, intercity train, passenger boat, air-plane.
As we saw in chapter 5, both children with and without family cars enjoyed
a high degree of independent mobility. For example, most never got rides
to their leisure activities. Actually, in this densely built inner-city neighborhood, walking was a major travel mode to leisure activities. Many also had
kin within walking distance. The high mean score (16.3) indicate to what
extent these adolescents had independent mobility. We expect that the corresponding score might be considerable lower in a suburban setting, but
until we have extended the data-collection to suburbs, we can only speculate.
Still we wanted to know if parents' attitudes made a difference. In the
questionnaire were several items dealing with this issue. The scale Parents'
Attitudes to Children's Independent Mobility were constructed from 10
questionnaire items. Although we already knew that almost all parents would allow their children on the subway and buses in daytime, and these
items therefore would not differentiate between parents, we still included
them in the scale. In another setting, parents might not be so liberal, and we
wanted to be able to make the comparison.
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It can also be noted that the three items from “Parents' attitudes to provide children with rides to activities“ (above) are included, although scored
in the opposite direction. When parents give children rides, they might provide them with activities, but simultaneously maintain dependent mobility.
• “There is a risk that modern children will get lazy and out of shape because they so often get rides“;
•“It is important that school age children can get rides by car to their activities“ (scored in reverse direction)
• If there is no car in the family, child learn better to get around on their
own
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go by subway on their own, to
school
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go by subway on their own, for leisure, in day-time“
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go by subway on their own, also in
the evenings, to around 9 p.m.
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go by city bus on their own, to
school“
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go by city bus on their own, for leisure, in day time.
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go home on their own rather late,
around 9 p.m., from the subway or bus stop, on lighted city streets, a 510 min walk
•“13-14-year-olds can be allowed to go home on their own rather late,
around 9 p.m., from the subway or bus stop, on empty parkways, a 510 min walk
In Table 6.3, the measurement parameters of the dependent variable
“Child's independent mobility“ and the predictor “Parents' attitudes to children's independent mobility“ are displayed. The other predictors, Parents'
education, Family type, and Number of cars in household, obviously are the
same as in the preceding analysis (Table 6.1).
Table 6.3 Measurement means, standard deviations and ranges (N=71)
Variable
Mean SD
range
16.3
4.1
6-24
Child's independent mobility
20.7
2.9
11-25
Parents' attitudes to children's
independent mobility
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The results of the regression analysis are displayed in Table 6.4. Model 1
shows that neither family type nor number of cars had a significant impact,
although the direction of influence was as expected: Less independent mobility with two parents and with more cars in the family.
In Model 2, the impact of parents' education was added, together with
the parents' attitude to children's independent mobility. As Table 6.4
shows, the latter clearly had a significant effect, with a standardized regression coefficient of 0.533 (p<.0001), When parents had a positive attitude towards children’s independent mobility, their children in fact had
traveled more on their own.
Here, we can conclude that there is a correspondence between parents'
beliefs about children's independent travel and their children's actual independent travel. In other words, parents' attitudes are important for the experiences their children have. We can also express the finding as: The children seem to comply with their parents' norms.
Table 6. 4 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining Children's Independent Mobility, and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model.
Standardized regression coefficients
Variable
Model 1 Model 2
Number of cars
-.118
.044
Family type
-.048
-.048
-.110
Parents' education
0.533****
Par. att. to children’s
independent mobility
.020
.264
R2
-.009
.219***
Adj R2
+ p < .10 * p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001 ****p < .0001
Yet we can be suspicious about the direction of the influence assumed
above: It is not impossible that the children are the primary agents, choosing
their own level of independent travel and that the parents adjust their views
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on permissible freedom accordingly. Keeping this uncertainty in mind, however, we take the conventional approach and express the relationship as if
parents are those who make up their minds first.
Returning to the research question: “ D o ad o l e s c e n t s wi t h o u t ca r(s )
p r a c t i c e mo r e in d e p e n d e n t mo b i l i t y , ge t t i n g a r o u n d mo r e wi t h o u t th e
h e l p o f a d u l t s ? “ o u r a n s w e r is : N o . In th i s in n e r c i t y s e t t i n g , mo s t
a d o l e s c e n t s e x e r t a h i g h d e g r e e o f in d e p e n d e n t mo b i l i t y , re g a r d l e s s o f
t h e fa m i l y c a r s i t u a t i o n . St i l l , th e i r p a r e n t s ' a t t i t u d e to a d o l e s c e n t
f r e e d o m ma k e s a d i f f e r e n c e , b u t th i s is n o t re l a t e d to c a r - o w n e r s h i p .
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6.4 Children's experiences of travel modes on long trips
6.4.1 Variables and method of analysis
During the interview, the children were asked about the longest journey
they had ever made, since the age of seven, and its destination and travel
mode, and with whom they went. The same questions were then asked
about the three longest trips during the last year. In the following, the
number of long trips by car, by train, and by air, out of these four long
trips, are analyzed with separate regressions. Trips by bus and by boat were
not analyzed, because they were rarer modes, and also because they have a
less clear environmental impact. Furthermore, the scoring of the studied
modes was not exactly equal. For “train“ and “air“ travel, it was enough
that part of the journey had been with these modes, while for “car travel“,
the whole trip had to be made by car. Thus, short car rides to the airport or
train station were not coded.
Obviously, in this manner of data-collection, the number of long trips
is fixed, but their length varies. As we have seen, a rather common destination for “the longest trip ever“ was to a vacation resort in the Mediterranean. However, all continents were represented in the sample, at the same
time as a few children never had been abroad. The destination of the shortest of the four trips (“the third longest in last year“) was generally to somewhere in middle Sweden, but the range was from middle Europe to a suburb of Stockholm.
Because the travel modes by air, by rail, and by car in a sense compete
with each other for their share of the four long trips, it is a natural consequence that they should be negatively correlated. In fact, the correlations
between the number of trips by each of these modes were between -.31 and
-.39. These are notable correlations, and statistically significant, but they
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are not strong enough to make separate explorations of their predictors unnecessary. A higher number trips with one mode does not automatically
lead to a low number of a particular other mode. Therefore, each travel
mode was analyzed separately. Obviously, each of these travel modes provides particular types of experiences. Air travel gives certain types of experiences, car travel another, train travel yet another, and children will learn
somewhat different things from each.
In regard to parents' attitudes, the questionnaires contained some items
dealing with car vacations and trips to relatives. Vacations and trips to relatives are the usual reasons for making long trips. In retrospect, we can
note that there is a lack of balance in regard to travel modes: We asked
about car travel in the questionnaire, but not about other modes. Yet we
can still argue that a high appreciation in regard to car travel on part of the
parents would lead to high number of car trips for their children. Also, a
high appreciation of car travel would lead to a lower number of trips by the
other modes. Obviously, car availability must be important to investigate,
and perhaps family type plays a role, as well as education. The multivariate
analysis will be performed as above, with a two-model hierarchical analysis.
There is one difference from above, however. Long trips on vacations
are very often undertaken as a family affair, and we can no longer disregard the fact that some of the children are siblings. Although the unit of
analysis still is the child, since we measure the experiences of individual
children, we will only consider one child from each family, always the one
who was interviewed first. As before, items from the questionnaire were
combined into a scale of parents’ attitudes, in this case Parents' Appreciation of Car Vacations with Children (7 items).
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• “If the family does not have a car, the children will miss out on many
fine experiences“
• “Car vacations strengthens family cohesiveness“,
• “The best vacations are those without car travel“ (reversed scoring)
• “Long car trips (6 hours or more) are very boring for children“ (reversed scoring)
• “A great advantage with cars is family privacy. If you go by public
transport it is embarrassing for example when the children do not behave“
• “When you go on a ski vacation, a car is necessary“
• “If the family does not have a car, it becomes much more difficult to
keep in contact with relatives“.
In Table 6.5, measurement parameters are presented. It is notable that the
most frequent of the three modes was by air. This was perhaps to be expected, given the question about the adolescents' longest trip ever. Cars and
rail travel are equally frequent, which very likely is quite special for this
setting, with easy access to both commuter and inter-city trains.
Table 6.5 Measurement means, standard deviations and ranges (N=57)
Variable
Mean SD
range
Number of long trips by car
0.88
.83
0–3
Number of long trips by rail
0.92
.81
0–3
Number of long trips by air
1.51
1.02 0–4
Parents' Attitudes to Car
vacations with Children
4.17
2.76 0-12.5
Parents' education
2.83
1.07 1-4
Family type (1 or 2 parents)
1.61
0.49 1-2
Number of cars in household
0.58
0.63 0-2
Note. Because this is based on 57 families, rather than 71 children, the means for parents'
education, family type and number of cars are not exactly the same as in Table 6.1
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6.4.2 Trips by car
In Table 6.6, Model 1 indicates that neither family type nor number of cars
made a significant difference, although the number of cars has an effect in
the expected direction. We did of course expect families with cars to make
more long car trips than families without cars, but here we can note that the
impact of car-ownership is surprisingly minor – not quite statistically significant (p < .10).
Table 6. 6 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining Number of Long Trips by Car, and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model.
(N=57)
Standardized regression coefficients
Variable
Model 1 Model 2
Number of cars
.254+
.084
Family type
.090
.077
Parents' education
.219+
Par. Apprec of Car Vacations
.388**
R2
Adj R2
.088
.054+
.215
.155*
+ p < .10 *p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001
When Parents' education and Parents Appreciation of Car Vacations are
entered in Model 2, we find that the latter turns out to be the important predictor. When this is taken into account, the number of cars in the family
makes no difference at all. The surprising fact that car-less children make
just about as many long trips by car as car-owning children will be discussed when all the travel modes have been investigated.
6.4.3 Trips by air
Quite naturally, the longest of the four longest trips tended to be made by
air. All but nine children had made at least one trip by airplane. The prediction models in Table 6.7 are constructed as before. Here we find a con-
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sistent pattern across the models, namely that number of cars is the only
significant variable. More cars in the family mean more trips by air.
Table 6.7 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining Number of long trips by Air, R2 and adjusted R2 for each model. (N=57)
Standardized regression coefficients
Variable
Model 1
Model 2
Number of cars
.329*
.402**
Family type
.040
.033
Parents' education
-.042
Par. Apprec of Car Vacations
-.173
.118
R2
2
.086*
Adj R
+ p < .10 *p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001
.142
.076+
6.4.4 Trips by train
Finally, we turn to the most environmentally benign travel mode, namely
train or rail. The same prediction models are employed as before. Again, the
number of cars turns out to be a significant predictor, in the negative direction. One or two cars in the family means less train travel – a relationship
that is not difficult to understand. Also the direction of Parental Appreciation of Car Travel makes sense: If parents appreciate car vacations with
children, they go less by train.
Table 6.8 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining Number of Long Trips by Train, and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model.
(N=57)
Standardized regression coefficients
Variable
Model 1 Model 2
Number of cars
-.432** -.339*
Family type
-.031
-.083
Parents' education
.124
Par. Apprec of Car Vacations
-.243+
R2
Adj R2
.197
167**
.277
222**
+ p < .10 *p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001
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6.4.5 Discussion
The results of the analyses of travel modes for long trips need some discussion. It is quite striking that car availability (Number of cars) made a difference for number of long trips by air (positive effect) and long trips by train
(negative effect) but not for the number of car trips. The fact that children
of car-owning families made fewer train trips is not difficult to understand,
but the other relationships are counter-intuitive.
Starting with car trips, for the noticed relationship to hold, obviously
children of car-free households must make some long trips by car. How do
they do it? Inspecting our qualitative data, we find a varied situation. Their
own parents may rent or borrow a car, or they make trip as a family with a
car-owning relative. In single-parent families, there might be a car-owning
“boy-friend“ to the mother, or the child makes a car trip with his or her carowning non-residential parent. Finally, a common situation for the child
was to accompany a friend on a long car trip with the friend’s parents. Of
course, there is no reason why children in car-owning families should not
do the same, but in our sample, there were few instances. Perhaps there is a
reason after all – children who do not often travel by car in everyday life
might be more available as travel companions for their friends when a long
car trip is the prospect.
Turning to air travel, why do children of car-owning families more often
make trips by air? Family economics could be an explanation, if we assume
that car-ownership is an economic issue. However, there were no correlations with parents' education or family type, a fact that does not support the
economic argument. In fact, judging from the informal data during the interviews, we would have expected the car-less to travel more by air, as several of these parents said that because they did not have a car, they could
afford more trips abroad. What other explanations could there be? Is there a
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personality factor, such as that car-owners are more likely to favor the fastest travel modes, and generally like to go far? Or is there a relationship with
occupation? In our sample, car-owner more often worked for businesses,
and in a few instances, the overseas trips were related to business as well.
However, by far the majority of airplane trips went to vacation resorts. Can
there be a more direct relation to car owning? If cars are used frequently in
everyday life, car travel might lose its attraction and a long car journey for
vacation is not particularly sought. A charter trip might seem a better way to
spend a vacation.
A logical consequence of the fact that car-owning children more often
travel by air is that they travel longer distances. If we had made an analysis
of the total distance covered in their longest journey ever, and in the three
longest trips last year, we would have found that car-owning children travel
the farthest. Yet they do this mainly because they travel more often by air.
To state the finding as “A family car enables children to travel farther“
would be misleading, because such a statement surely would be interpreted
as a matter of car-travel.
6.5 Children's contact with relatives
In the previous chapter, we noticed little obvious differences between carowners and car-less in their kin relations. As we have seen, however, a
multivariate analysis can bring out relationships that are obscured in a direct comparison, i. e. bivariate analysis.
6.5.1 Frequency of contact with kin
The frequency of contact with kin households is obviously a meaningful
entity to investigate. With frequent contact with many relatives, children
will experience their formative years differently than if they meet relatives
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only rarely. Having the mobility of a car, a family might be able to visit
their relatives, or kin, more often than otherwise, and also be able to keep
contact with a higher number of kin households. In chapter 5, a complex
reality of kin contacts was reduced to quantitative measures. The variables
that are meaningfully related to frequency of kin contacts are:
1. Number of kin households that the adolescent had met during the last
year
2. Number of those households with frequent contact, about every month
3. Number of those households with infrequent contact, up to three times a
year
However, there are obvious limitations to the three contact measures
above. What if a family sees a few relatives often, or many relatives rarely?
To make better distinctions between families in their total kin contact, we
also created a combined contact measure. The number of households with
frequent contact was added to the total number kin households, and the
number of household with rare contacts was subtracted. In this manner, the
highest possible score went to families with the maximum number of kin
households (8) of which all were seen every month. The lowest scores
went to families with few kin households, of which all were seen infrequently. See Table 6.9 .
Table 6.9. Measurement means, standard deviations and ranges (N=57)
Variable
Mean SD range
Total number of kin households
6.1
1.6 2–8
Number with frequent contact
2.6
1.4 0–7
Number with infrequent contact
2.1
1.6 0–7
Combined measure
6.7
2.8 0–7
Following the model of analyses above, we asked: How is number and frequency of kin contacts for the adolescents related to availability of a family
car, when family type, parents education and their attitudes are taken into
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account? In the questionnaire, item #44 was directly concerned with this
issue: “If the family does not have a car, it becomes much more difficult to
keep in contact with relatives“. How are the parents’ responses to this item
related to actual kin contact?
In Table 6.10, the results for all four of the contact variables are shown,
for the correspondents to Model 2 in the sections above. Clearly, whatever
kin contact measure we use, there are no significant relationship. This is why
only the final model, Model 2, is reported in each case. Since there are no
significant correlations with four predictors in Model 2, there can be none
with Model 1 either. None of the coefficients even approaches significance,
and the explained variance, R2 , is essentially zero.
Therefore, we must conclude that the family car has no effect at all on the
amount of contact with relatives that adolescents will experience. Of course,
this conclusion can only be extended to the present study, with an inner city
sample. Things might be different in another context.
Table 6.10 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining four variables of kin contacts: (1) Total number of kin households (=Tot
num), Number of kin households with frequent contact (Frequent), Number of
households with rare contact (Rare), and a Combined kin contact measure (see
text), and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model. (N=57)
Model 2: Kin contact variables
Independent variable
Tot num Frequent Rare
Combined
Number of cars
.015
.022
.081
.010
Family type
-.110
-.051
-.096 -.100
Parents’ education
-.104
-.223
.067
-.185
”Car for kin contact”
.062
-.187
-.044 -.055
.036
.072
R2
2
-.038
.001
Adj R
+ p < .10 * p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001
101
.013
-.046
.050
-.023
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6.5.2 Distance to kin households
While we have seen that the family car makes no difference in frequency
of kin contact, the analysis above has left out an important aspect, namely
the distance to the relatives. What if the car-owning families have farther to
go to visit their relatives, and are able to maintain as frequent contact precisely because they have a car?
A difficulty in studying this problem after the same model as in the
analysis above, is the logic in determining what is the dependent variable. If
relatives live far away, this might be a reason to maintain a car. Then distance is the independent variable; car-ownership is the dependent variable.
It is more strained to argue that car-ownership is the independent variable,
and distance the dependent variable. That would mean that relatives move
away because the family has a car, or else that a family move away from
their relatives because they have a car. Therefore, we must build the regression model on assumption that distance to relatives is the reason that a family maintains a car. Even in this situation, however, their attitudes can be
an independent variable. Their views on car-ownership can determine
whether they keep are car or not. The questionnaire item of “Car for kin
contact“ is as applicable here as in the preceding analysis. The same applies
to Parents' education.
Family type, i. e. the fact that some families contain only one adult, is
also a variable that statistically influences the likelihood that a family
keeps a car. In Sweden, single parents much less often have cars. Yet in the
current study, the impact of family type for car-ownership can not be adequately studied, because the sample was purposely selected to include a
certain number single parents with cars, and a certain number two-parent
families without cars. When Family car(s) are seen as the independent variable for children's experiences, which we have done up to now, this stra-
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tegy is an appropriate way to select the sample, because then the effect of
family type can be separated from the effect of car-ownership. But if the
family car is seen as the dependent variable, the same type of sample design makes it impossible to study family type as an independent variable, i.
e. in relation to car-ownership. This is because the strength of the relationship that we would find became determined already in the plan for the
composition of the sample.
These considerations lead us to exclude family type from the multivariate analysis. In the first model, which deals with the “structural“ or “objective“ variables, therefore only distance to relatives will be included. In Model 2, Parents' education and attitudes to “car for kin contacts“ will be added.
As with contact frequency, it is not self-evident how “distance to relatives“ should best be quantified. In the previous chapter, the complex reality
was quantified in several ways. First, number of kin households outside
Stockholm County. Secondly, there was a measure of number of kin household within the inner city of Stockholm. By subtracting this from the total
number of households that the adolescent has been in contact with, we obtain the number of kin households outside the inner city. Table 6.11 gives
the measurement parameters.
Table 6.11. Measurement means, standard deviations and ranges (N=57)
Variable
Mean SD
range
Number of kin households
outside Stockholm county
1.98
1.87 0–8
Number of kin households
outside Stockholm inner city
4.68
1.88 1-8
Table 6.12 gives the result of the multivariate regression with car-ownership
as the dependent variable and distance to relatives (measure in two alternative ways, as number of kin households outside Stockholm County and as
number of kin households outside Stockholm inner city) as the independent
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variable, in Model 1. In Model 2, education and attitude to car as enabling
kin contact are entered. For the two definitions of distance to relatives, the
results became very similar: No effect at all of “distance to relatives“, and
positive effect of attitudes, as measured by item #44 “If the family does not
have a car, it becomes much more difficult to keep in contact with relatives“.
Table 6.12 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining Car ownership, for two different measures of distance to relatives, and R2
and adjusted R2 for each model. (N=57)
Measure of distance to relatives
Outside S- County Outside S-inner city
Variable
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
Distance to relatives
.024
.012
.082
.043
Parents' education
.188
.191
“Car for kin contact“
.312*
.305*
.001
.112
R2
2
-.018
.062+
Adj R
+ p < .10 * p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001
.007
-.011
.114
.064+
How can this result be described a common-sense way? Even if a family
has many relatives who live at a distance, they are no more likely to keep a
car than if all their relatives live close by. But if the parents think that a car
enables them to keep contact with relatives, they are more likely to have a
car. It seems like car-ownership is a matter of subjective convictions, rather
than objective needs. However, before we pursue such a line of reasoning,
we should consider the limitations of measure of distance to relatives. Perhaps the number of relatives beyond a particular point is not the most
meaningful measure. The most important kin usually are grandparents, and
if they live far away, this might be powerful reason for a family to have a
car. In Table 5.9 and 5.10 the distances to maternal and paternal grandparents are shown, in more differentiated distance categories. Although most
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of the grandparents lived rather close to Stockholm, some lived far away,
even outside Sweden. In fact, these lived so far away that air-travel would
be easier than car-travel when visiting. (Although the table only has the
category “outside Sweden“, in fact all of these grandparents lived outside
Scandinavia). Thus, in these cases, we can hardly argue that car-ownership
would help a family keep in contact, and these will be treated as “missing
values“.
However, this means that quite a number of families will be excluded,
because they had no grandparents. To alleviate this possible source of
misleading results, a combination measure was constructed. It was assumed that if there was no grandparent household, or if the grandparents lived within air travel distance, the motivation to buy a car for visiting them
would be the same as if they lived in the inner city (lower than average).
Then the distance codes for maternal and paternal grandparents were added
together. This means that the highest score on ”combined distance to
grandparents” would be obtained by families who had both sets of grandparents living more than 500 km away, but within Sweden. Families with
both sets of grandparents living in Södermalm would obtain the lowest
score.
Table 6.13. Measurement means, standard deviations and ranges,
and number of cases
Variable
Mean SD
range N
Distance to maternal grandpar.
2.73
1.27 1-6
45
Distance to paternal grandpar.
3.20
1.20 1-6
39
Combined distance to grandpar.
5.40
1.76 2-11
57
Table 6.13 gives the measurement parameters. Table 6.14 gives the regression analyses for the three measures of distance to grandparents. The result
are very much the same as for the earlier measures of distance to relatives.
No matter in what way we try to obtain a valid measure of distance to
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grandparents, car-ownership is essentially unrelated to the distance. When
parents' education and attitude to “car for kin contact“ are added, the latter
seems to have an explanatory role for car-ownership.
If attitudes towards “car for kin contact“ are important in explaining carownership, what about other car-related attitudes? In Table 4.9, (Chapter 4)
we found quite significant correlations between the attitude dimensions and
car-ownership. The strongest relationship was with the first dimension
“Cars for enhancing quality of life“. In Table 6.15, also this dimension was
added a predictor, in a third model. This was done for three indicators of
distance, namely number of kin households outside Stockholm county,
number of kin households outside inner city Stockholm, and distance to
maternal grandmother (or grandfather). This variable was chosen from the
three grandparent distance variables because there was a hint of a correlation with car-ownership.
Table 6. 14 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables explaining Car ownership, for three different measures of distance to grandparents.
and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model. (N=45, 39,57)
Measures of distance to grandparents_________________
Maternal grandp
Paternal grandp
Combined grandp
Variable
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1
Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
Distance to relatives
.183
.132
.018
-.025
.027
-.033
Parents' education
.121
.102
.193
“Car for kin contact“
.271+
.193
.317*
.034
.117
R2
2
.011
.052
Adj R
+ p < .10 * p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001
.000
-.027
.038
-.044
.001
-.017
.113
.063+
However, it does not seem to matter what distance-to-kin variable we
chose, the effect of adding the attitude dimension “Car for enhancing quality of life“ is essentially the same in all cases. In the first place, the general
attitude dimension “Car for enhancing quality of life“ turns out to be a very
strong predictor of car ownership. The effect of “car for kin contact“ disap-
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pears entirely, which means that the parents' responses to this item are very
closely related to their more general views on “cars as enhancing quality of
life“, but the latter is a wider, and therefore dominant attitude dimension.
At the same time as the importance of the parents’ views on ”Car for enhancing quality of life becomes clear, the impact of their education increases, and becomes significant.
Table 6. 15 Standardized regression coefficients of the independent variables
explaining Car ownership, for three different measures of distance to relatives.
and R2 and adjusted R2 for each model. (N=57)
Measure of distance to relatives__________
Outside S- County
Outside S-inner city Maternal grandm
Variable
Model 2 Model 3 Model 2 Model 3 Model 2 Model 3
Distance to relatives
.012
.123
.043
.175
.132
.134
Parents' education
.188
.284*
.191
.287*
.121
.235+
“Car for kin contact“
312*
.014
.305*
-.015
.271+
.051
Att. dim: Car for
.618****
.635****
.515**
enhancing quality of life
.112
.386
.114
.400
.117
R2
2
.062+
.339****
.064+
.353****
.052
Adj R
+ p < .10 * p < .05 **p < .01 *** p < .001 ****p <.0001
.319
.251**
Although educated parents in general express somewhat more critical attitudes to cars, which was noted in chapter 4, there is still a positive correlation between education and car-ownership. In other words, if two parents
(or parental couples) have the same score on the dimension “car for enhancing quality of life“, those with the higher education are more likely to
have a car. In our sample, it is quite likely that more educated parents have
higher incomes.
This section has analyzed the relationship between children's contact
with their relatives and car-ownership. Whether we have focused on the
frequency of contact, or the distance to where the relatives live, there were
no differences between families with and without family car(s). In our data,
there is no evidence that car-ownership will increase the frequency of con-
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tact with relatives, or that families keep a car to overcome geographic distances to relatives. Instead the data indicate that a primary reason to keep
a car is that the parents feel that having a car generally enhances their quality of life.
6.6 Environmental attitudes
With a generally high awareness of environmental problems in the sample,
also the effect of the attitude dimension regarding “cars and the environment“ was investigated, both in relation to car-ownership itself, and in relation to travel modes on long journeys. It turned out to have little impact.
In relation to car-ownership, attitudes towards cars and the environment
added little towards explaining car-ownership, above the dimension of
“cars as enhancing quality of life“. Although the car-less viewed the environmental impact of cars as more serious than car-owners, this seemed
more to be part of a generalized negative attitude to cars, than a separate
dimension.
The impact of the environmental attitudes on travel modes on the children’s long trips was investigated, for both parents’ and children’s attitudes.
Neither parents', nor children's environmental attitudes made a difference
for the travel modes.
6.7 Summary and conclusion
In this chapter, the children's experiences and opportunities have been
analyzed simultaneously with respect to car-ownership and parents' attitudes. First, the life of the adolescents outside their families was investigated,
in relation to their leisure time activities, and their independent mobility. In
neither case did car-ownership make a difference, but in both cases did parents make a difference in other ways. With highly educated parents, child108
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ren had more organized activities, and when parents were in favor of children's independent mobility, their children got around more by themselves.
Secondly, some more family-based experiences were investigated, namely travel modes on long trips and kin contacts. Occasionally the adolescents did a long journey with other persons than their family and visited
kin by themselves, but on the whole these were family affairs. Siblings had
similar experiences, and therefore only one child from each family was
used in the analyses.
The investigation of travel modes on long trips yielded the surprising result that car owning and car-less children made an equal number of long
car trips. However, if parents appreciated car vacations, the children experienced more long car trips. The car-less children traveled more by train,
and the car owning more by airplane.
Kin contacts were investigated with several measures. There was no indication that children with family cars saw their relatives more frequently,
or had contact with more relatives. When instead the effect of distance to
relatives was investigated, on the hypothesis that families whose relatives
live far away might keep a car in order to maintain frequent contact, no impact of geographic distance was found. Instead it became clear that parents'
opinion that car-ownership “enhances the quality of life“ was a powerful
explanation to why they had a car.
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7. Discussion and conclusions
In chapter 4 to 6, a great number of results have been presented, in close
connection with the methods of obtaining them. In this chapter the meanings of the results will be discussed under thematic headings.
7.1 Adolescents and relationship with parents
In this study, 12-16-year-olds were in focus. Usually when children of these
ages are discussed, the theme is conflict and rebellion in relation to their
parents. In our results, instead the words compliance, loyalty and agreeing
with parents turn up.
To repeat the findings: In respect to children's independent mobility, if
parents were negative towards 13-14-year-olds getting around by themselves, the adolescents conformed and had less independent mobility, than if
the parents had a more liberal attitude. They were loyal to their family situation regarding car ownership: If the family owned a car, the adolescents
felt a car was a great asset for families with children; if it did not own a car,
the adolescents thought a car would add little positive experiences. This
agreement extended to individual families with the same car-owning situation: If parents valued cars as generally enhancing the quality of life, their
own children held similar views. The same was true in regard to the car as a
particular asset for children.
Why do we get these results? For one thing, psychologists have always
advised parents that they matter, even if their teenagers tell them that they
do not. Here we can see this truth in statistical tables, which seems unusual,
perhaps simply because it is quite rare to conduct studies to show it.
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7.2 What if the adolescents keep their views into the
future?
Although the section above stresses agreement between parents and children, at the same time there were differences. Particularly, in respect to the
attitude dimension “car for generally enhancing quality of life“, the car-owning children seemed influenced by their parents, while they simultaneously
disagreed! In other words, while the children generally held a more negative
view than their parents, if their parents were extra pro-car, their children
were more pro-car than their peers, but not as pro-car as their parents.
What happens if the car-owning children keep their attitudes for the next
decade, until they are around age 25? Will they buy cars to the same extent
as their parents? Taking into account that the attitude dimension “cars for
enhancing quality of life“ was a powerful predictor for car-ownership, and
that these children scored lower than their parents on this dimension, fewer
of them will buy cars. This will especially be true if they stay in the inner
city, since they did not think that a car would be much of an asset to innercity families. In addition, less than their parents, they thought that having a
car would improve their social status. However, if they get children, they
might still buy a car, in order to provide their children with car vacations,
which they seem to value highly.
What about the car-less children? They were even more negative towards
the idea that owning a car would enhance their quality of life, and they were
the least convinced of all that cars were necessary, even for suburban or
small town families. They were also the least convinced that having a car
would improve their social status, and that it would provide their children
with valuable experiences. And as we have seen, they were not without experience of car travel, so it would not be a matter of just not knowing what
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they were missing, which might change after a single car trip. Altogether,
they seem to have very little motivation to buy a car, if their attitudes to cars
remain the same. Of course, there were variations within this group, and
some of them ought to be motivated to buy a car.
If we consider the car-less and car-owning children together as a generation, today they seem less motivated than their parents for car-ownership.
Will they keep this point of view when they become older and have the means to buy a car?
7.3 The impact of car-ownership for the children's
experiences
The study was designed to investigate the role of the family car in shaping
children's experiences, in their neighborhood and beyond. In the bivariate
analyses, we could note a number of minor differences. Car-owning children
had more often been chauffeured to school (although it was rare also for
them), and the same applied to organized leisure activities. The car-owning
children had more often traveled by car during the last two week-ends, although they also had traveled on their own by public transport.
When all of these, and several other such differences, were investigated in
a more strict way with multivariate analyses, surprising few of the difference
were statistically significant. Car-ownership did not matter for the children's
number of organized activities, nor for their independent mobility, or for the
amount of contact with relatives.
Where car-ownership did matter was in relation to long journeys, but not
for the number of long car journeys. Instead car-owning children traveled
more by air, and less by train than the car-less. In section 6.4, we have already discussed this, and arrived to the conclusion that probably car-owners get enough of car travel during ordinary circumstances, and seek
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something else for vacation. W h a t e v e r th e in t e r p r e t a t i o n , th e lo n g tr i p
t r a v e l pa t t e r n of th e c a r - f r e e a d o l e s c e n t s wa s mo r e e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y
b e n i g n (m o r e ra i l a n d le s s a i r tr a v e l ) . If th e r e re a l l y i s a c a s u a l c o n n e c t i o n , t h i s fi n d i n g h a s fa r - r e a c h i n g im p l i c a t i o n : N o t o n l y is e v e r y d a y re l i a n c e o n c a r s e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y p r o b l e m a t i c in it s e l f , b u t it is
a l s o le a d s to mo r e a i r - t r a v e l f o r va c a t i o n s , wh i c h is e v e n le s s s u s t a i n a b l e in a gl o b a l pe r s p e c t i v e .
H o w e v e r , s o fa r th e fi n d i n g o f a c o n n e c t i o n b e t w e e n c a r a n d a i r
t r a v e l m u s t b e re g a r d e d a s h i g h l y t e n t a t i v e . To re c e i v e a n y c r e d i b i l i t y , i t n e e d s to b e s u p p o r t e d b y fu r t h e r re s e a r c h .
7.4 The impact of parents' attitudes
Parents provide their children with many things, of which the most important probably is themselves, including their viewpoints and value systems.
We could see that the family car did not matter very much for the totality of
the children's experiences (as measured in this study). On what points did
their parents’ attitudes matter?
In the first place, the parents' attitudes to cars seem to matter a great deal
for whether they owned a car or not (also discussed below). As we have
seen, this in turn seemed to mean a great deal for the children's attitudes, but
the parents' attitudes also seemed to influence the children's directly.
Turning to the more specific experiences, it was evident that parents' attitudes mattered for the degree of independent mobility that children enjoyed, as more liberal views meant more independent mobility for children. In
terms of long journeys, parent’s appreciation of car vacations made a difference, as more children experienced more long car journeys if their parents
appreciated car vacations.
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In contrast to the above, the parents' attitudes to the environmental impact of cars made little difference, either for car-ownership, or for their
children’s travel mode on long journeys. This agrees with other studies, and
as been explained as an effect of a “social dilemma“ (Nilsson & Küller,
2000). In simple terms, this implies that people do not believe that their
own actions make a difference, when other people drive cars a usual. In the
present study, an additional explanation is suggested by the questonnaire
responses, namely that many persons maintain the view that in the future,
technological fixes will solve the problem. Therefore, changing habits is not
really necessary.
7.5 Cars for enhancing the quality of life
and “Car affection“
Our attitude dimension “Cars for enhancing the quality of life“ is quite similar to Nilsson & Küller's (2000) attitude index “car affection“. Both of
these attitude constructs express a generally positive emotion directed toward cars, without pointing to a specific utilitarian need. In both studies, the
generally positive attitude to cars was an important predictor, for car use
and car-ownership, respectively. Both these studies thereby suggest that
people buy cars and drive cars simply because they like to, and not because
they have a real utilitarian need for a car or a practical reason to drive. Can
this really be true, not only for these two samples, but also generally?
To answer this question, we must note that Nilsson and Küller conducted
their study in Lund, a bicycle-friendly university town in which car-use is
lower than the Swedish average. Also in inner-city Stockholm, car-use is
low, which points to an explanation of the findings: When there are real
alternatives to cars, personal motives like simply liking cars and car driving, can make a great difference, exactly because there is a choice. In a
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setting where the objective need for a car is greater and the cost to maintain
it is lower, as in a suburban setting, the impact of personal likes and dislikes
of cars will be much less, because the alternatives are less available. In such
a setting, many persons will own and drive cars even if they do not particularly like it. However, also this explanation needs to be substantiated by
empirical research.
7.6 The impact of neighborhood for the children's
experiences
As we have seen, in this sample of 12-16-year-olds and their parents, living
in Södermalm, a central part of Stockholm, the children have extensive independent mobility during their daily and weekly activities. In addition,
they seem to have a very wide choice of leisure activities to engage in.
Even if the family owns a car, the children are rarely dependent on this
for leisure activities and visiting relatives on their own. Instead they walk
and use public transport. In this respect, it is obvious that the densely built
environment around them exerts a very powerful influence on their experiences, allowing a great deal of freedom and opportunity. In comparison,
family resources in the form of an automobile seem to matter very little.
Naturally, family resources in the form of economic means to pay for the
children's activities and required equipment will still be important.
In regard to the long trips, which take the children out of their neighborhood, we found an equal number of long car trips and long train trips, a
finding that is quite different from national statistics, as car journeys generally have a dominant place. Again, we view the high proportion of rail travel as an effect of the built environment in this setting. When the point of
departure is inner city Stockholm, the Swedish railroad system is very accessible. The high number of long trips by air can perhaps be given the
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same explanation, since also Arlanda, the main international airport, is very
accessible from the same point. For this conclusion, however, we need a
comparison with other settings with less direct access to the airport.
Altogether, it is quite clear that the adolescents in the inner city of
Stockholm get along quite well without cars, judging from their activities
and general travel pattern. These are their experiences, viewed objectively
as things they have participated in. In addition, these experiences seem to
enter into their subjective experiences, as they generally hold the view that
cars are not really necessary.
7.7 Questions for further research
As should be clear from the discussion above, we can not generalize the
findings of this study to other settings. On many points, it is essential to be
able to compare the results with the situation in other settings. We can be
quite sure that adolescents in suburban environments are more dependent on
cars, but we do not know to what extent. And of course we do not yet know
how the car-less suburban families solve the problem. The inner-city carless children seemed not at all bothered by their situation – but what is it
like when “everybody else“ around an adolescent has a car?
Among the more surprising findings, the fact that car-less children see
their relatives just as often as children with cars needs to be substantiated.
The same applies to the travel modes for long journeys, and the finding that
the car-owners travel more by air. Generally, of course, the attitudes toward cars, their necessity, their impact on the environment, and the other
dimensions that we have investigated, must be compared between settings,
for us to reach insights into the role of the automobile in the lives of today's
adolescents. Inner-city children are a small minority. Suburban children
together with those in smaller towns represent the majority.
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Sandqvist, K. (1999) Growing up with and without a family car. Föredrag vid
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Whitelegg, J. (1993) Transport for a sustainable future – The case for Europe. London: Belhaven.
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Appendix Questionnaire form
Vem fyller i? (Sätt kryss i rutorna)
Vilket kön?
Man/pojke Kvinna/Flicka Vilken ålder?
11 år eller yngre 12-13 år 14-15 år 16-17 år 18-19 år 20-24 år 25-29 år 30-39 år 40-49 år 50-59 år 60-69 år 70 år eller äldre Finns bil i hushållet?
nej, ingen bil ja, en bil ja, två eller flera bilar annat,nämligen________________________________________________
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ÅSIKTER OM BILAR, TRAFIK, MILJÖ, OCH BARNS UPPVÄXT
Här nedan finns ett antal påståenden om bilar och biltrafik, som man
kan hålla med om eller tycka är alldeles fel.
Vad tycker du själv? Sätt kryss i rutorna till höger efter hur du tycker att det stämmer med din egen uppfattning.
Bil i största allmänhet
(1)
Stämmer
inte alls
1. Det finns både bra och dåliga sidor med bilar
2. Jag kan inte tänka mig att leva utan bil i dagens
samhälle
3. Om man varken har bil eller körkort, då blir
man verkligen låst
4. Att hyra bil när det behövs går minst lika bra
som att äga bil
5. Det är vanligt att folk åker bil i onödan,
när de lika gärna skulle kunna gå, cykla
eller åka kollektivt
6. Det är egentligen inte så svårt att vara utan bil;
vill man så kan man alltid finna alternativ
7. Bor man i Stockholms innerstad behöver man
inte bil.
8. Utan egen bil blir tillvaron väldigt trist
9. Har man inte bil kommer man i socialt underläge, därför att folk ser ner på en
10. Den som inte har bil blir respekterad som
föredöme ur miljösynpunkt
11. Om man kan klara sig utan bil, då är det det
bästa sättet att leva
Eventuella kommentarer:
122
(2)
Stämmer
delvis
(3)
Stämmer
precis
Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
Biltrafik och den lokala miljön
12. Ju mer biltrafik, desto mindre trivsamma
blir stadsmiljöer och bostadsområden
(1)
Stämmer
inte alls
IOL/Forskning nr 3
(2)
Stämmer
delvis
(3)
Stämmer
precis
13. Det finns alldeles för många stora bilparkeringar som gör det fult, både i tätorter och
när man vill komma ut i naturen
14. Man måste acceptera att det finns mycket
bilar och trafik i moderna städer
15. Jag tycker att avgaserna blir besvärande
så fort det finns biltrafik i närheten
16. Utan bilar på gatorna blir det trist och dött,
och det gäller även privata personbilar
Eventuella kommentarer:
Bilen och miljön i stort
17.Om biltillverkarna verkligen ville, skulle
de lätt kunna ta fram en miljövänlig bil
(1)
Stämmer
inte alls
(2)
Stämmer
delvis
(3)
Stämmer
precis
18. Biltrafiken måste minska om vi ska undvika
en riskabel klimatförändring på jorden
en
19. Bilen slukar så mycket resurser, i material,
drivmedel och vägbyggen, att massbilismen
aldrig kan göras miljövänlig
20. Bilismens miljöproblem brukar överdrivas
21. Dagens trafiksystem med mycket bilar
kommer att ge en sämre värld i arv till
framtida generationer
Eventuella kommentarer:
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
Trafikpolitik och samhällsplanering
22. Bilägare är överbeskattade; det är alldeles
för hög skatt på bensin och dylikt
(1)
Stämmer
inte alls
IOL/Forskning nr 3
(2)
Stämmer
delvis
(3)
Stämmer
precis
23. I städerna bör man förbättra för gång- och
kollektivtrafiken, även om det blir besvärligare för bilister
24. Det borde finnas fler bilfria zoner i städerna
25. Alla borde ha rätt till avgiftsfri parkering vid
sin bostad
26. Att införa biltullar eller “trängselavgifter“
är ett bra sätt att motverka bilköer
27. Planeringen bör ge utrymme åt fler stormarknader med fri parkering, även om
det innebär att samhället blir mer bilberoende
28. Om inget görs för att motverka bilismen kommer trafiken och antalet bilar bara att öka,
vilket är negativt för trivseln i samhället
29. De billösa människorna och deras behov
glöms alltför ofta bort i planeringen
30. Det bör införas hårda begränsningar på
privata personbilar. (Men inte på varutransporter, färdtjänst och utryckningsfordon)
31. Med bra planering och kringfartsleder kan man
bygga bort problemen med störande biltrafik,
samtidigt som folk kan fortsätta att köra bil
lika mycket som idag eller mer
Eventuella kommentarer:
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
Bilen i barnfamiljer
(1)
Stämmer
inte alls
32. Om familjen inte har bil går barnen
miste om många fina upplevelser
IOL/Forskning nr 3
(2)
Stämmer
delvis
(3)
Stämmer
precis
33. Långa bilresor (6 tim eller mer)
är väldigt trist för barn
34. Bilsemestrar stärker sammanhållningen i familjen
35. De roligaste semestrarna har man utan bil
36. En stor fördel med bil är att familjen får
vara för sig själv. Åker man kollektivt är
det pinsamt t ex när barnen inte uppför sig
ordentligt när medpassagerarna ser på
37. Ska man åka på skidsemester blir det nödvändigt med bil
38. Det är viktigt att skolbarnen kan få skjuts till
olika aktiviteter
39. Finns det inte bil i familjen lär sig barnen
bättre att ta sig fram på egen hand
40. Det är risk att dagens barn blir lite lata och får
dålig kondition därför att de skjutsas så mycket
41. I vår familj finns det ingen risk att barnen
blir skjutsade för mycket
42. Det är viktigt att ha bil så att föräldrarna
kan övningsköra med sina tonåringar, så att
de lättare kan ta körkort
43. Det är pinsamt för barnen om familjen inte
har bil, eftersom alla andra har det
44. Om familjen inte har bil blir det mycket
svårare att hålla kontakten med släkten
Eventuella kommentarer:
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
IOL/Forskning nr 3
Barnfamiljer och deras behov av bil i olika ortstyper
Många anser att barnfamiljers behov av bil beror på barnens ålder och hur man
bor. I vissa lägen kan man rentav tycka att en bil är mest till besvär. Om vi tar
nedanstående typfamiljer, vad anser du om deras behov av att ha egen bil? Här
finns också möjlighet att kryssa för mellanlägen (2 eller 4) mellan de tre huvud–alternativen “Mest besvär“ (1), “Positivt (alltså 'trevligt och bra'), men inte
nödvändigt“ (3) samt “Absolut nödvändigt“ (5).
Att ha bil är
mer besvär
än glädje
och nytta
Bilen är en
positiv tillgång
men ingen
nödvändighet
45.Familj med småbarn i
(1)
innerstad i storstad. (Mataffär
inom 200 m, flera buss- eller
T-banelinjer som går var tionde minut.
Bor på stadsgata med dyr parkering.)
Att ha bil
är en absolut nödvändighet
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
46. Familj med barn över 12 år i
innerstad i storstad (Mataffär inom
200 m, flera buss- eller T-banelinjer
som går var tionde minut. Bor på stadsgata med dyr parkering)
47.Familj med småbarn i förort till
storstad. (Mataffär inom 1 km,
| | kollektivtrafik till city 2-3 gånger/tim
hela dagen och kvällen)
48.Familj med barn över 12 år
i förort till storstad. (Mataffär
inom 1 km, kollektivtrafik till city
2-3 gånger/tim hela dagen och kvällen)
49.Familj med småbarn i mindre
tätort. (Mataffär inom 1km,
buss 1 gång/tim, men post,
skola, arbete, affärer, föreningslokaler
samt järnvägsstation inom 3 km.)
50.Familj med barn över 12 år
i mindre tätort. (Mataffär inom 1km,
buss 1 gång/tim, men post, skola,
arbete, affärer, föreningslokaler samt
järnvägsstation inom 3 km.)
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
Att ha bil är
mer besvär
än glädje
och nytta
IOL/Forskning nr 3
Bilen är en
positiv tillgång
men ingen
nödvändighet
Att ha bil
är en absolut nödvändighet
(1)
51.Familj med småbarn på “landet“. (Mataffär inom 2 km, några bussturer
per dag till närmaste stad)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
52.Familj med barn över 12 år
på “landet“. (Mataffär inom 2 km,
några bussturer per dag till närmaste stad)
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Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
IOL/Forskning nr 3
Yngre tonåringar (13-14 år) på egen hand
När barn växer upp och blir tonåringar är det naturligt att de vill göra saker på
egen hand. Men det är klart att det också finns risker med detta. Om man tänker
på yngre tonåringar, i åldern 13-14 år, vad tycker du att de ska få göra, och vad
ska de inte få göra? Sätt kryss i den ruta som passar bäst med din uppfattning
Vad bör yngre tonåringar få göra?
(1)
Bör de
ej få göra
53. Åka tunnelbana på egen hand till och
från skolan
54. Åka tunnelbana på egen hand på sin fritid,
på dagen
55. Åka tunnelbana på egen hand även på
kvällen, fram till kl 21 ungefär
56. Åka tunnelbana på egen hand sent på
kvällen, ända till midnatt
57. Åka vanlig buss (alltså ej skolbuss) till och
från skolan
58. Åka buss på egen hand på sin fritid, på dagen
59. Åka buss på egen hand även på kvällen,
fram till kl 21 ungefär
60. Åka buss på egen hand sent på kvällen,
ända till midnatt
61. Gå hem själv från T-bana, pendeltåg eller
buss ganska sent, ungefär kl 21, på upplysta
stadsgator, 5-10 minuters promenad
62. Gå hem själv från T-bana, pendeltåg eller
buss ganska sent, ungefär kl 21, på folktomma parkvägar, 5-10 minuters promenad
63 Gå hem själv från kompis en lördagskväll
(ungefär kl 22) på stadsgator med många
lördagsglada människor, 20-30 minuters promenad
128
(2)
Tveksamt
(3)
Självklart
får de
göra det
Sandqvist & Kriström: Getting along without a family car. Part 1
(1)
Bör de
ej få göra
64. Gå hem själv från kompis en lördagskväll
(ungefär kl 22) på folktomma parkvägar,
20-30 minuters promenad
Tack för att du har svarat på våra frågor!
129
IOL/Forskning nr 3
(2)
Tveksamt
(3)
Självklart
får de
göra det
T
oday, the Swedish political rhetoric regarding transportation
regularly invokes families with children. It is argued as self-evident that
they must have a car, for everyday routines and for visiting relatives,
and will suffer unduly if petrol or car-ownership taxes are raised.
Implicitly, children need a family car, or even two, to grow up normally.
What impact do(es) the family car(s) really have in the lives of
children? Some families, in Sweden particularly single mothers, do not
have a car. Does an absence of a family car mean a paucity of enriching
experiences? Or does it mean more independence training? Do the
habits generated by the family car also shape parents’ views on
children’s independence, making them more restrictive in regard to
adolescents’ self-directed mobility?
At the same time as the family car(s) widely is considered a necessity,
the sustainability of present day car use is seriously questioned. For
young people in particular, a long-term environmental perspective is
appropriate. Not until around year 2050 will today’s adolescents reach
retirement age. To what extent are environmental considerations a
factor in the lives of today’s adolescents?
The present study is aimed towards investigating both what is on the
minds of adolescents and their parents regarding car-use, and what
are adolescents’ actual experiences in regard to mobility. The point of
departure is the intersection of the two sharply contrasting images of
cars – a boon to modern humanity and a threat to future generations.
The report is available at http://www.lhs.se/ind/publ/
ISSN 1404-983X ISBN 91-89503-02-3
Institutionen för individ, omvärld och lärande,
Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm