Influence of winter weather and warning information on mobility decisions, behaviour, and risk outcomes: A look through Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Practice Theory lenses

Winter storms present challenges to the safe design, operation and maintenance of transportation systems. The most frequent weather-sensitive decisions are those associated with personal mobility—routine trips that serve or facilitate social interaction, employment, business, shopping, recreation and leisure activities. A research project based in a large urban centre in Ontario, Canada (Regional Municipality of Waterloo) was completed to better understand how weather, and related government-issued warnings, affect trip and activity decisions and behaviour, and risk outcomes, during winter storms. The study involved three primary components: 1) a longitudinal analysis of relative risk using large secondary motor vehicle collision and fall injury data sets, 2) semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of households with high levels of everyday travel, and 3) experience sampling of the same cohort during multiple winter storms in near real-time. The latter was designed explicitly to measure and evaluate constructs within the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) enabling detailed examination of within-participant variation in responses prior to the winter season and across multiple winter storms. Results from all three elements are described and then interpreted through both the TPB and an alternative promising conceptualization, Social Practice Theory.