The perception of cycling and cyclists amongst non-cyclists: exploring opportunities for social marketing interventions to increase commuter cycling rates in theUK

Project Objective: The aim of the research is to explore the perception amongst noncyclists of cycle commuting and cyclists in order to gain insights to inform social marketing interventions designed to increase cycling rates. The insights gained and interventions highlighted should be accessible to and have policy, and planning relevance for, practitioners in this area.

Policy background and research rationale
In 2014 the UK Government drew up a plan to invest £214m to promote (Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, 2014) - to address such issues as obesity, the nation’s health, EU emissions targets, road safety and congestion. The Government has also made a strong economic case for increased cycling, citing a positive cost-to-benefit ratio of around 5:1 (Department for Transport [DfT], 2015).

There is evidence to suggest that following long-term decline more people are now cycling (Paton, 2015), but relative to use of motor transport cycling is still a minority activity amongst commuters.

Research already points to a range of situational barriers to cycling, such as infrastructure, traffic volumes and cost (Pooley, 2011), but there is limited research exploring less tangible concerns, such as how cyclists and cycling is perceived. Perceptions that are held of people, institutions, products and activities, and especially of peers and reference groups are important and unless cycling can be seen as both attractive and aspirational efforts to increase participation will be hampered. This research seeks to provide insight in this area.

Theoretical perspective
The research seeks to view cycle commuting from three theoretical perspectives: social marketing, consumer culture theory (CCT) and social/personal identity formation. In this configuration CCT and identity formation are seen as the lenses by which consumer behaviour is analysed to gain insight and social marketing is the device to create meaningful behaviour change interventions.

Social marketing is an individual-oriented marketing approach designed to deliver benefits to society (National Social Marketing Centre, 2015). The UK Government seeks to “kickstart" a cycling revolution…” such that “…cycling levels rival those in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany” (DfT, 2014:p4). The achievement of such ambitious goals would involve considerable behaviour change amongst key population groups; social marketing’s focus on individual level behaviour change (Hoek and Jones, 2011) suggests its application has a part to play in supporting policy implementers to achieve these goals.

Consumer culture theory is defined by Arnould and Thompson (2005) as a composite doctrine that addresses consumer identity, marketplace culture, socio-historic patterning and consumer ideology. Of especial interest is understanding the associations that exist
between identity formation and personal development, and how the notion of what might be called ‘cycling culture’ (Rosen, Cox, and Horton, 2007; Kuipers, 2012) might impact this relationship.

Identity formation involves both continuous self-evaluation and social comparison (Neff and McGehee, 2010). Social identity needs a social context, and ‘being at one’ with a certain group or tribe (Maffesoli, 1995), or being similar to that defined group, is key. These people represent the ‘in’ group, whilst all others are the ‘out’ group (Stets and Burke, 2000). Identifying with, and feeling part of, a positively perceived social category (or reference group) helps in the affirmation of personal identity but if a chosen category (e.g. cycling fraternity) is perceived to be at odds with positive self-definition then this will be perceived as the ‘out’ rather than ‘in’ group. Understanding how to align the multiple identities of self and ‘cyclist’ may well offer some insight into how commuters can be encouraged to engage with cycling. Key to gaining an insight into how this might be achieved is to understand how ‘cycling culture’ is perceived by target groups.

Method
Research in the areas of social marketing, CTT and identity formation often takes a qualitative approach but in keeping with the views of Arnould and Thompson (2005) this is not a prerequisite. Current work by faculty in this area includes both qualitative research (focus groups based on projective techniques) and quantitative work involving large sample sizes. We are open-minded regarding well planned and executed research taking either approach.