What is the relationship between online activity and driving-licence-holding amongst young adults?

摘要

Driving-licence-holding has declined amongst young adults in a number of industrialised countries inrecent years. A wide set of hypotheses have been raised as possible contributors to thisphenomenon. Among the more intriguing of these hypotheses is the suggestion that the opening-upof the online world, with the capabilities it offers to perform many types of activities remotely, hasled young adults to feel less need to drive and hence to acquire a driving licence.This paper makes use of two distinct datasets that each contain rich pseudo-diary instruments inwhich people indicate important characteristics of their unique online-activity profile. This includesboth indicators of the types of activities in which respondents participate, and either (in one dataset)the amount of time per week they spend online or (in the other dataset) the frequency of theirInternet use.On the basis of a set of multivariate regression analyses, a positive (i.e. complementary) relationshipbetween young adults’ online activity and licence-holding was found. Both datasets show this typeof effect.As this is a different relationship than previously reported in the literature, further research isneeded to reconcile the differences (which are likely due at least in part to different methodologicalapproaches and data resources). The implication is that if online-activity is not responsible fordeclining rates of licence-holding, other mechanisms must be. Further research is needed tocontinue to disentangle the relative saliency of other hypotheses for the drop in licence-holding (e.g.economic and socio-demographic shifts, as well increasingly-stringent licence-acquisition regimes).