Transport Planning special feature
USING PERSONAS TO SUPPORT TRAVEL BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
The use of personas to influence and inform decision making in transport is increasingly popular – and important. Focus finds out more.
Based on robust data – as all travel behaviour change should be – personas strengthen the linkages between baseline data, and development and implementation of interventions and ensure successful buy-in from the target audience. The concept adds an extra layer of information about transport network users. It delves more into how people think and how they make decisions about their travel. The human decision-making process is complex and prolific. Humans on average make something like 35,000 decisions in any one day. As transport planners we can’t possibly analyse and influence all decisions related to transport. However, personas help to us rationalise this process and make more sense of it. These groupings can then be used to understand where potential travel behaviour change measures could be more successful. They inform planners who to reach out to, how to reach out to them and the potential outcomes and impacts.
1. Why do we need to change the way people travel?
Transport accounted for around one-fifth of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in 2020[1] and in the UK, domestic transport was the largest emitting sector in 2023, responsible for over a quarter of all emissions. The Net‐Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE) requires transport sector emissions to fall by around a quarter by 2030, even as transport demand continues to grow. To achieve Net Zero, policies need to encourage shifting to less carbon-intensive travel options, such as walking, cycling, and public transport, as well as to more efficient technologies, like electric cars and trucks[2].
2. How significant is behaviour change in achieving a reduction in emissions ….?
The wholescale transformation of the energy sector demonstrated in the NZE cannot be achieved without the active and willing participation of citizens. It is ultimately people who drive demand for energy‐related goods and services, and behavioural change will play a pivotal role in steering the energy system onto a sustainable path.
The importance of behavioural change is illustrated by the International Energy Agency Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector (as shown in Figure 1) which states that, overall, 63% of all required emissions reduction requires some form of behaviour change (55% of emissions reductions require a mixture of the deployment of ‘low‐carbon technologies and the active involvement or engagement of citizens and consumers’ and 8% stem from ‘behavioural changes and materials efficiency gains’).
3. Importance of understanding behaviours
People make travel decisions based on a complex web of motivations, constraints, and routines. These decisions are rarely isolated or purely rational; instead, they are deeply embedded in daily life and influenced by broader behavioural patterns. To design effective interventions, it is important to clearly define the specific behaviour that is being targeted, as it may be entangled with other behaviours across time and context. The Capability, Opportunity and Motivation – Behaviour (COM-B) model is one framework that enables identification of the barriers to changing or adopting new behaviours. Considering the three aspects of COM-B enables the design of initiatives that align with the often-messy realities of people’s lives.
So, to achieve travel behaviour change, it is important to get a better understanding of the way that end users behave and make decisions so that policies and initiatives can be introduced which are more likely to motivate them to change. It also needs to be recognised that people have different ways of thinking. One way to get a better understanding of this is through the development of personas. Personas enable us to gain an understanding of the current behaviours and preferences of different types of transport users. They should be compelling narratives that represent different types of users and help the reader to empathise with those users. In the context of transport and travel, they are useful to help planners, designers, and engineers to understand and incorporate the experiences of real people and better target the delivery of behaviour change initiatives.
4. Development of personas for Heathrow airport colleagues
Heathrow is working to reduce colleague car travel and encourage more people to commute by sustainable modes of transport as outlined in the Heathrow surface access strategy (2022 to 2026) [4] . To achieve this goal, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) has introduced a wide range of colleague travel initiatives. It has been increasingly recognised that the 75,000 staff working at the airport not only have very different job types and requirements but also have different mindsets which affect their propensity to change the way they travel. In 2024 Heathrow carried out an airport-wide travel survey and there was an opportunity to include six behaviour change questions. The survey responses were then used to develop a set of personas to refine, better target and improve the effectiveness of the colleague travel initiatives.
5. our approach
Creating personas is an art and a science so this work used a blend of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The personas were developed using two distinct methods of data analysis: manual review and statistical analysis using SPSS. Together these approaches enabled us to identify statistically significant and interesting patterns and develop a set of five personas, grouping Heathrow colleagues according to their mindset. Working titles for the personas are the Routine Keeper, the Plan Flexer, the Open minded Organiser, the Investigator and the Neutral Commuter.
Each persona is accompanied by a concise description that captures their defining characteristics, commuting behaviours, and attitudes toward change. To provide further context, the descriptions also include the typical socio-demographic attributes most likely to be associated with each group, including job role, income level, and life stage.
The personas provide a valuable insight into our target audiences’ own views and perspectives that we wouldn’t otherwise have. They provide a rich and actionable understanding of the colleagues working at the airport. By uncovering the underlying motivations, constraints, and behavioural patterns of the persona groups, travel behaviour change interventions can be evidence-based and more targeted. These insights can directly inform policy development, communication strategies, and infrastructure planning—ensuring that initiatives are not only relevant but also resonate with the specific needs and values of different persona groups.
Author bios
Sarah Cherry is a Project Principal at Mott MacDonald, and a respected travel behaviour change specialist with 29 years of experience. She has led numerous travel demand management (TDM), travel planning and travel behaviour change initiatives and was responsible for developing some of the first company and area-wide travel plans in the UK. She is currently leading the development of personas for Heathrow airport colleagues.
Damian Price is the Global Practice Lead for Transport Planning at Mott MacDonald. He is a Travel Demand Management and behaviour change specialist with over 20 years’ experience working on programmes across the UK and internationally including for the UK Department for Transport, Transport for New South Wales in Australia and the Abu Dhabi Government in the United Arab Emirates. He is overseeing the project to develop personas for Heathrow airport colleagues.
Hamish Speakman is a principal transport planner at Mott MacDonald with nine years’ experience working for public and private sector organisations. This has included leading on the development and delivery of travel behaviour change strategies. He is the technical lead on the project to develop personas for Heathrow colleagues using his experience of developing personas for the City of Gold Coast Council and Queensland Department for Transport and Main Roads in Australia.
Sarah Xu – is an airport planner at Mott MacDonald with a strong background in using Excel and Power BI for data analysis. She is a core part of the team and the data analysis lead for the project to develop personas for Heathrow colleagues.
[1] Ritchie Hannah (2020) - “Cars, planes, trains: where do CO₂ emissions from transport come from?”
[2] https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport
[3] International Energy Agency (2021). Net Zero by 2050 A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
[4] https://www.heathrow.com/content/dam/heathrow/web/common/documents/company/about/company-information/2022-Surface-Access-Strategy.pdf