ESRI Working Paper No. 745 - February 2023 - Using Behavioural Science to Design and

We find that research on moderators of the success of active travel initiatives points to the importance of connectivity and safety perceptions, particularly among women and older adults. [...] The scale of the benefits depends on the design of the infrastructure. [...] Part of the variation in estimates is due to increasing returns to scale in the aggregate economic benefit of active travel, meaning benefits are greater for communities that invest in networks to overcome initial fixed costs rather than piecemeal 10 implementation of disjointed tracks (Szell et al., 2022). [...] One limitation of the research reviewed in this section is that it generally considers the impact of infrastructural change independently of how visible the changes are to the target users. [...] When the status quo was to be outside the scheme, the average ‘willingness to pay’ to join was $170, but when the status quo was to already be part of the scheme, maintaining membership was valued at $420.