What is the Relationship between Online Activity and Driving-licence-holding Amongst Young Adults?

Driving-licence-holding has declined amongst young adults in a number of industrialised countries in recent years. A wide set of hypotheses have been raised as possible contributors to this phenomenon. Among the more intriguing of these hypotheses is the suggestion that the opening-up of the online world, with the capabilities it offers to perform many types of activities remotely, has led young adults to feel less need to drive and hence to acquire a driving licence. This paper makes use of two distinct datasets that each contain rich pseudo-diary instruments in which people indicate important characteristics of their unique online-activity profile. This includes both indicators of the types of activities in which respondents participate, and either (in one dataset) the amount of time per week they spend online or (in the other dataset) the frequency of their Internet use. On the basis of a set of multivariate regression analyses, a positive (i.e. complementary) relationship between young adults’ online activity and licence-holding was found. Both datasets show this type of effect. As this is a different relationship than previously reported in the literature, further research is needed to reconcile the differences (which are likely due at least in part to different methodological approaches and data resources). The implication is that if online-activity is not responsible for declining rates of licence-holding, other mechanisms must be. Further research is needed to continue to disentangle the relative saliency of other hypotheses for the drop in licence-holding (e.g. economic and socio-demographic shifts, as well increasingly-stringent licence-acquisition regimes).

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB30 Operator Education and Regulation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Le Vine, Scott
  • Latinopoulus, Charilaos
  • Polak, John
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 21p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Datasets; Developed countries; Internet; Licensing; Multivariate analysis; Socioeconomic factors; Young adults
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01519314
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-5703
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 24 2014 12:02PM