Perceived safety and security constraints to achieving a shift from fossil fuel cars to other options in rural areas

Abstract

Reducing the use of fossil fuels for personal transport is challenging in rural areas where car dependency, long distances, and a lack of services and collective travel solutions are common. The transition is proving slow, as many people see cars as essential to fulfilling their needs and therefore a potentially car-less future as restricting their accessibility. One perceived obstacle to the transition is security, or perceived safety, which is the focus of this paper.

This study examines the conditions for replacing fossil-fuel cars for personal transport with any alternatives leading to lower CO2 emissions, exploring what shapes rural people’s needs of this transition, focusing particularly on their security and safety concerns.

The empirical material comes from focus group discussions with civil servants and rural inhabitants in the sub-arctic north of Sweden which is one of Europe’s most sparsely populated areas. The results show that based on current conditions relying on only alternatives to the fossil-fuel car in rural areas would lead to insecurity, and that concerns about security affect rural inhabitants’ choice of transport mode. In addition, whether or not alternatives to the fossil-fuel car are perceived as broadly feasible seems to be affected by a small proportion of the journeys individuals make, in this study referred to as boundary-setting trips comprising “tough journeys”, “journeys out of one’s control”, and “journeys affected by the unexpected”.