Not unsurprisingly, we also found, in both steps of the analysis, that people in poor health participate less than healthier people in environmentally friendly types of travel such as walking, cycling or public transport. A combination of limited physical mobility (especially for walking and cycling) and financial constraints (e.g. train travel which can be expensive on certain routes) are likely explanations.
Poor health puts people at a disadvantage in relation to saving electricity or using environmentally friendly means of travel compared to people in better health, at given income levels and other hong kong rcs data characteristics. For instance, they will be relatively more affected by rising electricity prices or taxes.
At the same time, people in poor health might have travel needs that they find difficult to satisfy due to financial and mobility constraints. To address this, public transport systems need to be made more accessible and affordable.
The good news is that people in poor health will tend to be relatively less affected by eco-taxes on motor fuels or flights than healthier people because they also make much less use of these high carbon modes of travel.
The flip side is that improving the populations’ health could not only increase engagement in low carbon modes of travel, but also their more environmentally damaging counterparts.
Therefore, accompanying measures are required to dis-incentivise car and air travel which would cut emissions while putting less of a burden on people in poor health.
This post is based on the Open Access paper Büchs, M. et al. (2018) Sick and stuck at home – how poor health increases electricity consumption and reduces opportunities for environmentally-friendly travel in the United Kingdom.