Researching Cycling Behaviour

To date we’ve surveyed over 36,000 people in the UK about their cycling, health and travel behaviour as part of our Workplace Cycle Challenge programme. This includes more than 13,000 ‘non-cyclist’ participants.

We now have some great results and interesting findings from this research. For example, we know that:

• Behaviour change programmes work - 1 in 3 non-cyclist participants (37%) continue to cycle once a week or more after they take part in a Workplace Cycle Challenge.

• Hills are not a barrier for many non-cyclists - Non-cyclists in hilly areas are almost just as likely to continue to cycle once a week or more than non-cyclists in flat areas (31% vs 37% of non-cyclists continue cycling regularly each week in hilly and flat areas respectively).

• Behaviour change programmes work even in ‘cycle unfriendly’ areas - Non-cyclists who live in areas that can be classed as ‘neither cycle friendly nor unfriendly’ are just as likely to continue cycling as non-cyclists in areas that are ‘cycle friendly’ (40% and 41% respectively). Where as in ‘cycle unfriendly’ areas it is 27% of non-cyclists who continue to cycle each week, which while is clearly less than 40% is still a good result for a project.

What would you like to find out?

If we had the key to open up the heads of people in your area and ask them any questions you liked about cycling, what would you ask?

We’re currently re-designing our surveys for our future Challenges, and we would like to get the thoughts and ideas of people who are working to get more people cycling in the UK.

We’re looking for new questions that we can ask each of our three key audiences:

• Non-cyclists – people who don’t currently cycle

• Occasional Cyclists - people who cycle 1-4 times a month

• Regular Cyclists – people who cycle on 2+ days a week.

Sharing Knowledge with the cycling community

We’re keen to share the results of our research with people like yourself who are working to design and implement programmes that will encourage more people to cycle, more often and for transport trips.

It’s our aim to give you the intelligence to make your job easier and your projects more effective.

Send in your questions

Please do take minute to think up some questions that you would like to ask each of the above audiences. You can send your thoughts, ideas and questions to:

work-with-us@lovetoride.org

If you send in an idea by 31 August 2011 then we'll put you in the draw to win a bottle of New Zealand wine!

Please feel free to get in touch:

Thomas Stokell

+44 (0)7984 309 265

thomas@lovetoride.org

Thanks for your thoughts and insights.