By Dr. Noel Cass
12th November 2025
ELEVATE’s latest publication, How do electric cargo bikes fit with real life? A social practice analysis in the United Kingdom, focuses on e-cargo biking as a ‘mobility practice’. But… How is this a different way of thinking about e-cargo bike usage than what we typically see in other transport research? And, what did it help us to understand about our research participants’ experiences?
Most transport research, including much of ELEVATE’s work, talks about things like motivations, trip purposes and distances, attitudes and beliefs, and the weighing of time, cost and convenience. These are seen as the considerations that lead people to choose one mode of transport or another. Data on these factors is collected via surveys, travel diaries, and the tracked movements of transport itself. Interview research often carries on this line of thinking, seeing travel as a rational choice between modes, and getting more detail on what led people to choose one mode over another.
Social practice theory shifts the focus of attention from individual choices to practice: routines, habits, and the normal way of doing things, in both senses of that word. Social practice is what most people do, and what is considered normal to do. Elevate’s trial loans were particularly suited to understanding whether everyday travel and household life could be shifted from car driving to e-cargo biking. Why? First, because we focused on people keen to try rather than experienced riders or random members of the public, we could study what recruited’ people to the practice of using e-cargo bikes (to use the theory’s terms). Second, because our 4-week trials (11 households borrowed the bikes again in the winter for 1-6 months) allowed people enough time to adopt e-cargo biking as a routine, to make it the normal or default way of getting about. We could find out when this worked, and when it didn’t, for whom, and where.
Throughout my career, I have researched and written about everyday travel using social practice theory. One insight I have outlined is that simply driving or riding a mode of transport is not usually a complete practice, done purely for itself. Instead, using the transport mode combines with purposes in the form of, for example, car-commuting, bike-leisure, or bus-shopping: I call these mode+activity practices. Car commuting ‘recruits’ people easily, and is hard to ‘defect’ from (in practice theory terms again), in part because the car can transport lots of things that allow other social practices to be accomplished on the same day. Such things include children’s school bags, work equipment, swimming or gym gear, shopping, and so on. Using any other mode of transport, e.g., a bike, bus or walking, usually requires different trips equipped just for that one activity.
Further, practice theorists occasionally ignore the importance of ‘affect’, or emotion. People sometimes change the mode of transport they use throughout their lives, because of the pleasure and satisfaction from other things they could do while travelling – exercise, actively navigating, listening to music or podcasts, monitoring speed or miles per gallon. Both mainstream transport research and practice theory seem to continuously underestimate how important these pleasures are to how people travel at different ages and life stages.
Our new paper, How do electric cargo bikes fit with real life? A social practice analysis in the United Kingdom, combines the above insights. It suggests that e-cargo biking is a mobility practice which, like the bike, allows exercise, a more environmental lifestyle, and avoids congestion and parking issues. It also, like a car, can transport equipment needed for multiple purposes, while having other distinctly ‘car-like’ characteristics: carrying bulky items and keeping multiple children dry while travelling, to give common examples . Other ‘car dependent practices’ that people found e-cargo bikes perfect for included recycling and delivering to charity shops, and litter-picking in the surrounding countryside, as well as swimming trips and picnics with the whole family.
The e-cargo bike also allows people to accomplish some normally car-dependent things that are very important to them, while travelling without a car. These include chatting with their children (i.e., ‘parenting’) while travelling, getting them out in the outdoor environment, and travelling together as an activity or to activities on the weekend. Focusing on these things – the ability to combine activities and to do things that are emotionally important to people – reinforces why it is that some people were swiftly recruited to using our e-cargo bikes, while others were not. Their life-stage, household make-up, and the things they got pleasure from all helped to cement their regular use.
In sum, social practice theory allows for a shift in focus from the individual to their routines and ways of accomplishing things, involving competences, materials, meanings, and emotions and purposes. For Elevate, this has shown us that e-cargo biking is particularly amenable to parents of young children. They are the most likely to find the e-cargo bike as satisfying as a car, both in how it allows them to string together the different activities in their busy lifestyles, in ways that give the extra satisfactions of cycling and parenting at the same time. At the same time, they can pass on to their children that leaving the car at home can be fun and pleasurable: a satisfying alternative.