Towards a mobility transition? Understanding the environmental impact of Millennials and Baby Boomers in Europe

The purpose of this paper is to add knowledge on the understanding of if and how the Millennial generation is contributing to a transition towards more sustainable travel behaviours, from a Europe-wide angle. The study uses a comparative approach on a cohort and territorial basis. On one hand it analyses the differences between the Millennials, which are experiencing a general decrease in car use/ownership, and the Baby Boomers, which are seen to be highly car-dependent – even after retirement. On the other hand, it considers the territorial differences among EU countries with aggregate analysis on a regional basis. The method includes secondary analysis of European datasets with descriptive analysis and logistic regression. According with the results, it is confirmed that Millennials have less polluting habits than their predecessors (less car use/ownership, less probability of being car users independently from context/status). But in recent years this trend is experiencing a change of direction, with general rise in car use/ownership, with different paces and schemes among clusters of countries. This suggest that i) with the improvement of their individual status and general European economic recovery, Millennials’ car use tends to rise (with Baby Boomers remaining static with their driving habits); ii) the pace and extent of this rise is highly dependent on the regional context, with a substantial impact of Eastern countries (quickly catching up with Western levels) and PIIGS countries (showing high elasticity on car use depending on the economic fluctuations) resulting in an overall rise in car use in Europe.