Understanding voluntary carlessness: Why outliers matter

Abstract

In line with scholarly and practitioner efforts to encourage and facilitate sustainable mobility by reducing dependence on private cars, this study aims to better understand voluntarily carless families. In particular, it focuses on two questions. First, what motivates voluntarily carless households? Second, what personal practices facilitate carless family mobility? Focusing on outliers, in this case, middle-class Israeli families with children who chose a carless lifestyle enables the identification of previously unobserved factors that affect the choice to live without a car. Based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with carless families (N = 27), this study offers two main contributions. First, it identifies overlooked variables, such as fear of driving and healthy lifestyle preferences, that may explain household car ownership. Second, it uncovers both instrumental practices and emotional resolutions as facilitating a voluntarily carless lifestyle.