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Disruption: the raw material for low carbon change

Funded by: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Open University Business School contact: Dr Helen Roby

Background

As part of a consortium led by Leeds University, Dr Helen Roby has been awarded funding from the RCUK Energy Programme for a three year project titled ‘Disruption: the raw material for low carbon change’. The Disruption project looks at how travel practices are formed and directed by complex underlying societal factors. The research confronts the dominant view that travel behaviour is fixed, routine and habitual. Disruption is used as a lens to look at the way people’s lives are frequently disrupted by a whole range of possible events, from family illnesses to volcanic ash clouds. The insights that these disruptions provide can help reveal the kinds of changes, to transport and other policy sectors such as health, education and business that are needed to inspire and facilitate a shift to lower carbon travel. It acknowledges that travel practices emerge as a result of complex system connections and seeks to observe and change these rather than focussing solely on the role of the individual. Helen will be leading on a specific work package exploring the organisational response to disruptive events that affect travel behaviour at a number of levels, including the individual level and unplanned geographical events. It will identify the extent to which organisations adapt or suspend operations or develop innovative solutions which could be used to challenge current thinking.

Aims and objectives

  1. Challenge current thinking about the degree to which travel behaviour is stable and difficult to change 
  2. Examine instability in travel practices through the lens of unplanned disruptions originating in the private, institutional and public spheres 
  3. Complete a real time study of disruption in a flexible and responsive way 
  4. Apply an integrated, mixed methodological approach which draws upon social psychology, social theory of practice and theories of governance and policy practice
  5. Harness the understanding gained about complex system connections to lead to a revolutionary new approach to the design of effective policy interventions to reduce carbon emissions from travel 
  6. Engage a wide range of policy makers and practitioners across various domains to embed transformative change generated by insights from disruption

Methods

The research explores travel practices in a range of places and social contexts, with the understanding that these different contexts influence the ways we travel and how we reduce barriers to positive change. The research will study at close hand how disruption affects the real choices people make, and what this teaches us about the opportunities to change travel practices at individual level and within families; in organisations that generate travel demand and impact on our own individual travel decision-making; and within government where policies that determine our travel opportunities are made. The project will use a range of innovative research methods to do this including capturing travel behaviour through Facebook and Twitter and carrying out video-recorded mobile interviews. Those taking part in the research will be able to choose how they work with researchers to best capture their travel experiences and how these are influenced by different disruptions, which they identify as being significant. The project then brings together the different social actors, both ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ in a number of forums where they have the opportunity to ‘deliberate’ the different issues that will emerge throughout the research, and challenge each other about what needs to be done to capture the opportunities for change. Lastly the project seeks to establish mechanisms for embedding these changes in everyday life, in organisational practices and in social policy, so that a substantial contribution to reducing carbon emissions from transport is achieved.

Links

Research centre: Responsibility and Regulation (R&R)