Cetelem and C-Ways have become investigation partners and developed the Observador Cetelem Automóvel 2021. A study that focuses on the theme of urban cohabitation, and under which 10,000 people were inquired using the CAWI collection method.
Due to the cooperation of the respondents from across 15 countries, it was possible to collate information to support the idea that “the position of cars, especially in the city, has been contested”. In our country’s case, “8 in 10 Portuguese’s would like that the car’s utilization decrease”.
This doesn’t mean that the population is appealing for the annihilation of the cars. What is being asked is that people rethink the use of these vehicles, “opening the way to other forms of transport, preferably more sustainable and carbon free”. A change that would bring us to the “sustainable urban cohabitation”, assures Cetelem.
The receptivity to non-motorized forms of transport
To achieve the mentioned “sustainable urban cohabitation” it’s necessary to provide more spaces adequate for other forms of mobility: walking, bicycles, scooters, and others. Something that 82% of the inquired people seems to agree with. “Even if that means to penalize or restrict the use of the cars”, the study authors’ emphasized.
Analyzing, in even more detail, the answers given we can check that “92% of the Portuguese’s wants more spaces adapted to another forms of mobility”. Portugal is, of the 15 respondents, the second country with the highest number of positive answers to this question. Only Brazil exceeded this result, with 96% of its participants supporting this change.
According to Cetelem, “the desire for urban cohabitation between all the modes of transport is shared by all the 15 countries inquired”. However, some showed to be more receptive than others to this reality.
On one side we have the emergent and Mediterranean countries, and China, as the biggest defenders of this concept. France, German and Belgium, the three countries where the politic ecology is more expressive, seems to show weaker convictions. “Maybe because it is a reality that already has a bigger expression”, points out Cetelem.
The restrictions of circulation are indispensable
The Observador Cetelem Automóvel 2021 also helped to predict how the people would react to eventual measures to restrict the traffic and the pollution of the motorized vehicles. We are talking, for example, about urban tolls and driving bans for certain vehicles.
Faced with this possibility, there were two opposing positions: “while 75% of the respondents believe that these restrictions are useful and indispensable, more than half also consider that these measures are too numerous (54%), and sufficiently restrictive (65%)”, specifies Cetelem.
The collection of these data was only possible due to the quantitative fieldwork developed by Harris Interactive between the 2nd and 11th of September 2020. During this period the group inquired citizens from: Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
The people who took part in this study were aged between 18 and 65, and the representativeness of the sample is ensured by the quotas method (age and gender). In total 500 people from each country were interviewed, except in France where 3,000 interviews were made.
