Carbon-Aware Travel CHoice (CATCH) in the city, region and world of tomorrow
Project details
Full project title: Carbon-aware travel choice in the city, region and world of tomorrow (CATCH)
Sponsors: European Commission Seventh Framework Programme
Centre for Transport and Society (CTS) Principal Investigator: Erel Avineri
CTS Principal Researcher: Dr E. Owen D. Waygood
Project partners: MRC McLean Hazel; POLIS Network; Q-Sphere; Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, S.A. (SICE); Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ); Transport and Environmental Engineering Programme (PET); Dept of Manufacturing and Management Engineering, University of Palermo, Italy (UNIPA); Systematica, Italy; Handan Municipality, China; Union Internationale des Transports Publics (UITP); TRL Limited.
Start date: August 2009
Finish date: January 2012
Project website: Carbon Aware
Project briefing sheet: Download the briefing sheet document (PDF)
Project summary
CATCH (Carbon-Aware Travel CHoice) is a £2 million collaborative project funded by the EC Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The purpose of the project is to help cities reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced by transport. CATCH aims to develop and disseminate an open-knowledge platform for information and advice on reducing transport-based CO2. Information will be tailored to different users such as practitioners, policy decision makers, and citizens. Working with an International consortium of partners from Italy, Belgium, Spain, China, Brazil, and the UK, The Centre for Transport and Society (CTS) is leading the review, grounding and evaluation of this project. A selected number of cities from across Europe will contribute to the knowledge platform.
The CTS team lead two of the Project's work packages. In Work Package 1 we lead the initial research into an inception behaviour report and follow-up research into key research gaps relevant to the project, the academic community, and climate change information providers. In Work Package 3 we developed a common database and estimates of CO2 emissions, in collaboration with Tim Chatterton of the Air Quality Management Resource Centre, and other performance indicators related to the different travel scenarios.
The Behavioural Inception Report considered existing literature from transport, psychology, behavioural sciences, and other fields to examine issues related to behaviour change with a focus on individuals and information use. Emerging fields such as travel behaviour change through behavioural psychology highlight how attitudes, intentions, experience and habits, personal and social norms, among other factors all contribute to an individual's behaviour. The initial research stressed empirical evidence of behaviour change and the factors that contribute to those changes.
Building on that literature review, quantitative and qualitative research was conducted to investigate gaps highlighted in the research and needs of the project. Surveys and focus groups were used to investigate how people respond to different presentation formats of CO2 information with consideration to both understanding and motivation to reduce car use. Within the survey, several different influences were investigated such as stage-of-change (with respect to personal CO2 production), information anchors, and gain/loss framing.
Along with presenting information in clearer ways, the research looked at several points directly relevant to the outputs of the project such as practitioner needs and motivations to change behaviour apart from environmental motivators. Initial findings from that research have been compiled and presented in the Research and Design Report. Publication of academic results are underway.
UWE Bristol research first
In Work Package 3, the UWE Bristol team, managed a first by estimating the road transport CO2 amounts for nearly 150 cities across Europe. The work used GIS data from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry (E-PRTR) along with political city boundaries and Eurostat's Large Urban Zone, which is defined as the functioning urban area. The application of the dataset created by UWE Bristol could be seen in a tool created by Systematica.
Papers, presentations and press
A number of papers reporting on the findings of the review and grounding taken by the CTS team have been published and presented. Please notice that the contents of this section are updated from time to time.
Project reports
Avineri, E., Waygood, E.O.D (2010), Carbon-Aware Travel CHoice in the city, region and world of tomorrow: Behavioural Inception Report
Waygood, E.O.D, Avineri, E. (2010), Carbon-Aware Travel CHoice in the city, region and world of tomorrow: Research and Design Report
Journal papers
Avineri, E. and Waygood, E.O.D. (n.d.), Applying valence framing to enhance the effect of information on transport-related carbon dioxide emissions. Forthcoming in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.
Conference papers and presentations
E. Avineri and E.O.D. Waygood (2012), Gain/loss framing of transport-related CO2 amounts. Workshop on Prospect Theory and Experience, January 9-11, The Dead Sea, Israel. (presentation only).
Waygood, E.O.D., Chatterton, T. and Avineri, E. (2012), Leaders and laggards in transport CO2 emissions: The challenges and outcomes of benchmarking sustainable urban transport systems across Europe. The 44th Annual UTSG (The Universities' Transport Study Group) Conference, Aberdeen, UK, January 4-6 2012. (presentation only).
E. Avineri, E.O.D. Waygood and T. Chatterton (2011), Estimation and benchmarking of transport-related carbon emissions at European cities. The 52nd Conference of the Israeli Geographical Association (IGA2011), December 25-27, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Waygood, E.O.D., Avineri, E. and Chatterton, T. (2011), Designing Carbon Communication. Presentation given at Kyoto University and Hiroshima University, Japan, Dec. 21-22, 2011.
Avineri, E. and Waygood, E.O.D. (2011), Enabling Behaviour Change, CATCH Final Conference, Bristol, UK, Dec. 13, 2011. (presentation only).
Chatterton, T., Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2011), Leaders and laggards in transport CO2 emissions: The challenges and outcomes of benchmarking sustainable urban transport systems across Europe. CTS Winter Conference, Bristol, UK, Dec. 8, 2011. (presentation only).
Avineri, E. and Waygood, O. (2011), Applying goal framing to enhance the effect of information on transport-related CO2 emissions. 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, September 2011.
Binsted, A., Clark, A., Waygood, O. and Avineri, E. (2011), Carbon Aware Travel Choice for Sustainable Mobility. Transport Practitioners Meeting, Liverpool, UK 19-20 July, 2011.
Binsted, A., Clark, A., Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2011), Communicating the impacts of transport choices to encourage low carbon travel behaviours. In: M. Gather and A. Lattmerding (Eds.), Transport and the Environment: Sustainable Transport, Green corridors. Proceedings of the 8th SoNorA (South-North Axis) University Think Tank Conference, June, Szczecin, Poland. ISSN 1868-8411, pp. 5-17.
Waygood, E.O.D., Binsted, A., Clark, A. and E. Avineri (2011), Developing an online tool for behavioural change in urban transport. ECEEE Summer Study, Toulon, France, 6-11 June, 2011.
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2011), The effect of loss framing on the perceived difference of CO2 amounts: Implications for Advanced Travel Information Systems. The 43rd Annual UTSG (Universities' Transport Study Group) Conference, January, Milton Keynes, UK.
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2011), Does "500g of CO2 for a five mile trip" mean anything to the general public? Towards more effective presentation of CO2 information. Transportation Research Board (TRB) 90th Annual Meeting, January, Washington D.C., USA.
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2010), Are web-based CO2 information sites applying behavioural economics principles? Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference, September, London, UK. (presentation only).
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2010), Visual formats, reference points, and anchoring effects on perceptions of travel choice sustainability. 1st Workshop on Traffic Behavior, Modeling and Optimization - TBMO'2010, The 13th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2010), September, Madeira, Portugal.
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2010), The effect of loss framing on the perceived difference of co2 amounts: Implications for Advanced Travel Information Systems. CTS Winter Conference, December, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. (presentation only).
Avineri, E., Waygood, E.O.D. and Susilo, Y.O. (2009), Providing rail passengers with information on the environmental impacts of their journeys. NECTAR Cluster 1 (Networks) Meeting on Railways in the 21st Century: Spatial Economic, Societal and Environmental Impacts, November, Jerusalem, Israel. (presentation only).
Other media
Avineri, E., and Waygood, E.O.D. (2012), The use of framing to highlight differences between transport-related CO2 amounts. Forthcoming in PROJECT, Journal of the Department of Planning and Architecture, University of the West of England, Bristol.
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2011), Does "500g of CO2 for a five mile trip" mean anything? Towards More Effective Presentation of CO2 Information. Sustainability, Health and Environment (Poster Exhibition), April, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.
Waygood, E.O.D., Avineri, E. (2010), Supporting sustainable travel. The Bulletin, University of the West of England, January, Issue 91.
Waygood, E.O.D. and Avineri, E. (2010), Inception Report: Main Findings. Presentation at Core Interest Group Meeting, February, Brussels, Belgium.
Avineri, E. and Waygood, E.O.D., (2010), Information on Transport Alternatives - How to make it effective through 'choice architecture'. Presentation at the 2nd Interest Group Meeting, November, The Hague, The Netherlands.