Reducing car use: changing attitudes or relocating? The influence of residential dissonance on travel behavior

Recent empirical studies have shown that attitudes and lifestyles are important determinants of travel behavior and modal choice. Less obvious and documented is that these ‘soft variables’ also influence other, non-travel related aspects such as residential choice. The result is that preferred residential neighborhoods not always match with the actual residential neighborhood. This residential dissonance (or mismatch) also has its influence on travel behavior since the preferred travel modes of dissonant residents may not be ideally available in their actual neighborhood. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of residential dissonance on travel mode choice in Flanders, Belgium. Residential dissonance clearly affects the ability of people in realizing their preferred travel behavior, albeit in different ways for urban and rural residents.