Julia-Pearl AVELINE

The literature on mobility biographies identifies life events as moments
of transformative change on daily mobility behaviour. This PhD thesis explores this central hypothesis by analyzing the relationship between life events and changes in mobility behaviour using data from a French Mobility Panel (PaNaMo) conducted between 2018 and 2024. The survey tracked the mobility behaviour and life events of a representative sample of the French metropolitan population.
This work is organised around three main questions : (1) How can we measure changes in mobility behaviour and life events ? (2) To what extent can these changes in behaviour be credited to life events themselves, independently of other factors ? (3) What other factors such as mobility intentions, motility, mobile socialization, and habits contribute to trigger or inhibit these behaviour changes ?
Our results show that changes in travel behaviour are neither systematically nor strongly correlated with life events. Overall, their effects remain limited. However, they appear to be more pronounced in the context of professional career paths (such as retirement and a first job).
The analysis also highlights the central role of habits, particularly of driving habits, as a factor of stability even in the face of life events. Stated intentions to change and perceived motility play a less important role, as does mobility socialization. Our results suggest that the idea of an automatic unidirectional transformative effect of life events on daily mobility is different to validate empirically at this stage. This highlights the need for more extensive qualitative approaches to better elucidate the links between life events and changes in mobility behaviour.

Mobility biography, life course, life event, daily mobility, behavioural change