Mobility patterns established during childhood play an important role in shaping travel behaviour later in life. While transport planning has traditionally focused on infrastructure and spatial accessibility, research on mobility socialisation emphasizes that children’s everyday mobility is strongly embedded in social contexts. This study examines how social environment, infrastructural conditions, and route perception relate to active school travel among school-aged children. The analysis is based on a multi-site survey conducted between November 2024 and January 2025 at six school sites in rural areas and small towns in Styria, Austria. Pupils aged 6 to 14 years and their parents were surveyed. The study combines information on pupils’ school travel behavior with indicators of parental and peer influence, subjective assessments of the school route, and basic spatial and sociodemographic characteristics. Walking to school was analyzed using a logistic regression approach, while wheeled school travel (cycling and scooter use) was examined using descriptive and bivariate methods due to a limited number of cases. The results show that socialization processes are more influential than infrastructural factors. Walking to school is primarily associated with social environments, particularly peer practices and parental orientations, whereas infrastructure and route perceptions do not exert independent effects once social factors are considered. Wheeled school travel is mainly shaped by peer dynamics and age-related autonomy, with infrastructure acting as an enabling rather than determining condition. Overall, the findings suggest that strategies to promote active school mobility should extend beyond physical infrastructure and more strongly address social contexts, everyday practices, and peer dynamics in which children’s mobility is embedded.
Ellmer et al. (Thu,) studied this question.