Exploring the Influence of Parents on Children’s Bicycling in Davis, California

In the past few decades, active travel in children has decreased tremendously. This trend clearly has negative implications for public health, the environment, and traffic congestion. In order to reverse this trend, it is necessary to understand why some children are walking and biking for transportation and others are not. This paper investigates the role of parent behaviors, attitudes, and decision-making for influencing child bicycling behavior. The authors undertake 25 in-person interviews with parent-child pairs in Davis, California. The qualitative analysis reveals that parents play an important role in determining how often their child rides a bike. Parents influence child bicycling behavior by setting rules about where children can travel, helping them to negotiate barriers, and shaping their attitudes toward bicycling. These results suggest that efforts to encourage bicycling in children should primarily target parents and should seek not only to change parental attitudes, but also behavior.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Bicycle Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Driller, Brigitte K
  • Handy, Susan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
• Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 14p
• Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Attitudes; Behavior; Bicycling; Children; Decision making; Parents
• Geographic Terms: Davis (California)
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01472411
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 13-3924
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 19 2013 8:45AM