Organisation: Oxford Brookes University, Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis & UK CRC Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR)
Date uploaded: 7th January 2020
Date published/launched: May 2016
Findings revealed that the motive for purchasing e-bikes was often to allow maintenance of cycling against a backdrop of changing individual or household circumstances. E-bikes also provided new opportunities for people who would not otherwise consider conventional cycling. Perceptions of travel behaviour change revealed that e-biking was replacing conventional cycling but was also replacing journeys that would have been made by car. There was also a perception that e-biking has increased, or at least allowed participants to maintain, some form of physical activity and had benefitted personal wellbeing. Technological, social and environmental barriers to e-biking were identified. These included weight of bicycle, battery life, purchase price, social stigma and limitations of cycle infrastructure provision.
Additional research is necessary to quantify actual levels of mode substitution and new journey generation among new e-bike owners and the impact of e-biking on promoting physical health and mental wellbeing.
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