Evidence review exploring how car ownership is changing in the UK

The Department for Transport (DfT) commissioned the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to carry out research to understand employers’ attitudes towards encouraging their employees to reduce their commuting and business travel emissions, identify facilitators and barriers to employers doing so, and exploring the support employers needed to help employees towards greener travel choices. The research was conducted between November 2022 and January 2023. It involved a literature review and fifteen qualitative interviews with large employers that had already taken up low-carbon travel initiatives for staff, employer membership organisations, and Local Authorities. Findings from this scoping research will inform future research priorities.
The literature review found that, historically, employers have taken little interest in encouraging employees to reduce their workplace travel emissions unless it contributed to their companies’ profitability. However, recent evidence and trends documented in literature and captured via interviews with employers indicated that business attitudes to workplace travel may have shifted in recent years, with employers taking greater responsibility for their staff’s workplace travel.
The employer interviews identified a range of barriers to business uptake of workplace travel initiatives, including a lack of knowledge about initiatives, perceived high upfront costs to introduce initiatives, lack of infrastructure, and issues with taxation. It was considered easier for employers and employees to engage with decarbonising workplace travel in regions where public and active travel infrastructure were more developed.
Interviewees’ suggestions for government support for employers revolved around four main themes:
There were two main strands of research:
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