Soft Interventions for Sustainable Mobility: Classification, Factors Affecting Effectiveness and Insights for the Development of Measures in the Context of Lithuania

Abstract

Soft sustainable mobility measures can help achieve climate change goals in the Lithuanian
context. To provide recommendations for the most effective measures, researchers are developing
and testing interventions of various scales and types. As this practice is not widely used in Lithuania,
it is useful to rely on research conducted by foreign researchers for the development and application
of soft sustainable mobility measures in the Lithuanian context. In the literature, travel behaviour
interventions are often classified according to the internal variable to which they are directed. As an
alternative, this article proposes a classification according to the decision-making process - conscious
and automatic. It is argued that such a classification allows for the development of more
comprehensive tools. Quantitative literature analysis is often performed to compare the effectiveness
of different interventions. However, the effectiveness of soft travel behaviour interventions and the
indicators that reflect it are often determined by circumstances that cannot be quantified. This makes
it difficult to predict the potential impact of a particular intervention in different contexts. Therefore,
an analysis of 20 soft travel behaviour interventions was performed, which qualitatively analysed the
effectiveness of the interventions targeting both decision-making processes and identified the factors
influencing it.The results revealed that the effectiveness of soft interventions is influenced by the
social and infrastructural contexts in which the study was conducted, the participants' initial mobility
behaviour, recent changes in their living circumstances, and the relevance of the information
provided. Furthermore, the results of the intervention are determined by when the effectiveness was
measured and the types of trips analysed. These factors make it difficult to compare the effectiveness
of interventions that target different decision-making processes. However, the results of the study
support the claim that both types of measures are necessary to promote sustainable mobility
behaviours and should therefore be used together. Based on the results, recommendations for the
development of soft travel behaviour measures in the Lithuanian context are presented.