Annex A – Background: Policy context and funding structure
‘Behaviour Change’ Policy Context
Theoretical models of behaviour change
Following best practice in policymaking and transport planning, the People & Place programme follows a ‘behaviour change’ approach to promoting active and sustainable travel. This approach grounds the programme’s overarching ‘theory of change’ in the ‘Individual, Social, Material’ (ISM) model of influencing behaviours, and in these terms, the specific ‘target behaviour’ of the P&P programme in Year 1 was:
The public choosing active travel over private car for short, everyday journeys
To unpack this further:
- ‘Public’ means the programme is concerned primarily with personal travel choice (as opposed to commercial travel, for example).
- ‘Active travel’ refers generally to walking, wheeling, andcycling.
- ‘Short journeys’ means under two miles for walking and wheeling, and under five miles for cycling (measures linked to corresponding Scottish Household Survey questions).
- ‘Everyday journeys’ means almost every trip purpose that is not exceptional or very occasional (again linked to corresponding Scottish Household Survey questions).
ISM is a theory and evidence-based way of thinking about three different contexts (individual, social, and material) that work together to influence people's behaviours.
Large-scale material factors are the domain of our active travel infrastructure programme, whereas individual and social factors (as well as some small-scale ‘light’ infrastructure) are the domain of this ‘People & Place’ programme. In coordination with each other, both programmes form a holistic approach to the policy aim of promoting more sustainable travel behaviours.
In addition to ISM, the ‘Capability, Opportunity, Motivation’ (COM-B) model is used as a useful tool for breaking those individual and social factors down even further, and starting to identify the more specific interventions that need to be put in place to address them for different people in different places.
For any behaviour to be enacted people must have the capability to do it, the opportunity to do it, and they must be motivated to choose it over alternatives. In this sense, the aim of the programme is:
Enabling and promoting modal shift through removing cultural and socioeconomic barriers to choosing active travel.
Mapping our policy aim against the elements of COM-B:
- Enabling = Capability.
- Promoting = Motivation.
- Removing cultural / socioeconomic barriers = Opportunity.
- Active travel = Behaviour.
Behaviour change theory in to practice
It is important to acknowledge that when viewed through the lens of behaviour change theory, the programme’s goal of getting the public to choose active travel over private car for short, everyday journeys, has the key characteristics of a classic ‘wicked problem’, including: “A broad definition, many possible solutions, being only one element of a dynamic system, and having outcomes that emerge over different time horizons.” To have any possibility of success at addressing ‘wicked problems’, programmes must be developed collaboratively and support pluralistic and agile sets of means of achieving their goals.
Defining the problems
There is no full definition of all the individual or social factors or the cultural and socioeconomic barriers to choosing active travel, although there are common themes that many people experience. These factors differ greatly between different people, at different times, and in different contexts. Some barriers to choosing active travel will be specific to a local area. This is well illustrated by the different strategies referenced in the RTP Policy Context section.
Identifying the solutions
Just as there is no definitive formulation of the barriers and factors impacting active travel uptake, there is no exhaustive set of potential interventions: One scoping review of cycling promotion activities alone identified no fewer than “484 actions within 93 action types within 33 action categories under the nine intervention functions”. This is exemplified by the various planning considerations outlined in the RTP Approaches to Programme Delivery section on what kinds of interventions ought to be the focus of attention where.
There are well understood interventions recommended to address common barriers to adopting active travel such as: education, training, promotion, and travel planning, with positive outcomes from these being seen and measured. However, there exist only a few objectively definitive ‘tests’ of the correctness of these interventions, in that they seek to shift participants’ knowledge, skills, beliefs, feelings, and intentions through behavioural ‘Stages of Change’, with long-term outcomes being new travel habits that are themselves heavily influenced by independent external factors. Rarely can interventions be definitively judged the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ones but rather good or bad, better or worse, depending on the context, and after having allowed sufficient time for results to emerge.
In the sense of being affected by external factors, the ‘problem’ the programme seeks to address can also be considered as a symptom of other systemic ‘problems’ outwith the immediate scope of programme. These include car-centric transport and urban planning, and socioeconomic and health inequalities, which the programme in turn helps to address through the co-benefits it delivers. This point comes to the fore in the Joined-up Delivery section describing the programme’s valuable cross-portfolio work.
Assessing the outcomes
There is no ‘stopping rule’ for having reached the conclusive solution to promoting active travel. The closest measure is captured in the Active Travel Framework’s vision for making walking, wheeling, and cycling ‘the most popular choices’ for short, everyday journeys (a national goal curbed by variable local geographies). This is informed by an understanding from behavioural science that policymakers should aim for:
pushing behaviours past an adoption threshold beyond which further uptake is self-reinforcing
Pizziol, V., Tavoni, A. From niches to norms: the promise of social tipping interventions to scale climate action. npj Clim. Action 3, 46 (2024).
The importance of supporting long-term strategic approaches to delivering policies with broad goals is illustrated in the Capacity and Capability section.
Closing the loop
These are the kinds of considerations that the programme’s evolving monitoring and evaluation framework seeks to take into account: Is public funding of these specific interventions moving us towards fulfilling the programme’s goal, and if so, by how much? This is topic covered in the report’s section on the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.
Transport Scotland Policy Context
National Transport Strategy
Active travel is fundamental to all interconnected priorities of the Scottish Government’s National Transport Strategy. This emphasises sustainable, inclusive, and accessible transport system that supports health and wellbeing, economic growth, and climate action.
Just Transition Plan for Transport
Scottish Government published a draft Just Transition Plan in February 2025, setting out a vision for decarbonising the transport sector by 2045 in a way that is fair, inclusive, and supports communities, aiming to ensure that no one is left behind as the country moves toward net-zero emissions. The draft Just Transition Plan recognises that government cannot deliver change alone, highlighting the essential role of regional partnerships and the importance of local engagement and delivery.
Physical Activity for Health Framework
It is important to note that the ‘target behaviour’ of the programme in fact encompasses two challenges, the first being ‘choosing active travel’ at all, and not just in preference to driving. This highlights the programme’s connection to action to improve levels of physical activity nationally, and particularly the virtuous circle between the governments walking for health and walking for transport policies: Traveling actively for everyday journeys supports people to be healthier, and in turn healthier people are able to travel actively for more of their everyday journeys.
Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009
Surface transport was the highest emitting sector in Scotland in 2022, accounting for 23% of Scotland’s emissions. Carbon emissions from the sector are stubborn, having fallen by less than 1% since 1990. The 2009 Act sets ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including a net-zero target by 2045, which places significant emphasis on reducing transport emissions through modal shift to active and sustainable travel.
RTP Policy Context
Each RTP developed their programmes in the context of their Regional Transport Strategies (RTSs) and additional regional and local Transport and Active Travel Strategies (ATSs).
Some of this important transport strategy and planning work has been supported through People & Place funding itself under the programme’s ‘Capacity and Capability’ theme, for example HITRANS’ refreshed five-year Behaviour Change Strategy, and SEStran’s forward-looking Delivery Plan. These are good examples of how the programme is helping to build the foundations of longer-term change, improving on previous funding that was spread widely and with less coordination, leading to a tendency towards relatively small single-year projects.
Funding Structure
People & Place funding
A total of £19,000,000 (£7,000,000 RDEL, £12,000,000 million CDEL) in programme funding for RTPs was approved from the 2024-25 Active Travel Budget. RTPs negotiated an appropriate distribution of this funding between themselves, proposing a formula that reflected their population split, and also challenging geographic barriers faced by RTPs covering islands, highlands, and rural communities. The proposal was for a 7% baseline split of Revenue and Capital, with the remaining allocated on a per capita basis
| RTPs | RDEL | CDEL | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| HITRANS | £584,370 | £1,041,816 | £1,626,186 |
| SEStran | £1,913,954 | £3,412,200 | £5,326,154 |
| SPT | £2,615,032 | £4,662,120 | £7,277,152 |
| SWestrans | £432,480 | £432,480 | £864,960 |
| Tactran | £649,472 | £1,157,880 | £1,807,352 |
| ZetTrans | £180,264 | £180,264 | £360,528 |
| Nestrans | £624,427 | £1,113,240 | £1,737,667 |
| Total | £7,000,000 | £12,000,000 | £19,000,000 |
Local Authority Direct Award (LADA) funding
In addition to People & Place funding, separate LADA funding of £4.5 million from Transport Scotland to Local Authorities (LAs) served the same core purpose as the RTP funding: Supporting the delivery of active and sustainable travel behaviour change interventions. Crucially, alongside enabling LAs to directly deliver and commission their own work (particularly essential for larger authorities), this funding was weighted towards resource and had a strong emphasis on maintaining the staff and expertise that hold the People & Place delivery model together (particularly essential for smaller authorities). The shift from the Smarter Choices Smarter Places (SCSP) LA Fund to a ‘direct award’ funding model, one with light-touch monitoring and evaluation requirements, was also established in 2024-25, both as part of Transport Scotland’s active travel transformation work, and in response to the imperatives of the Verity House Agreement and the wider public service reform agenda to provide more autonomy for the LAs. Given their links, from 2025-26 LADA was explicitly brought under the banner of the programme as the ‘People & Place
Local Authority Direct Award’. LADA funding was also allocated on a per capita basis, with a ‘baseline’ of £64,000 for each Local Authority. The constituent councils within each RTP region were allocated the following funding in total:
| RTPs | RDEL | CDEL | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| ZetTrans (One LA) | £42,667 | £21,333 | £64,000 |
| HITRANS (Five LAs) | £307,311 | £153,656 | £460,967 |
| Nestrans (Two LAs) | £259,175 | £129,588 | £388,763 |
| Tactran (Four LAs) | £269,118 | £134,559 | £403,678 |
| SEStran (Eight LAs) | £867,455 | £433,727 | £1,301,182 |
| SPT (Twelve LAs)* | £1,176,846 | £588,423 | £1,765,269 |
| SWestrans (One LA) | £77,427 | £38,714 | £116,141 |
| Total | £3,000,000 | £1,500,000 | £4,500,000 |
* Including the Helensburgh and Lomond wards of Argyll and Bute.
Taken across the two funds, this represented a significant level of annual investment of £23.5 million placed directly in the hands of local government for the purpose of promoting active and sustainable travel.
Active Travel Infrastructure Funding
In 2023-24, Scottish Government Active Travel infrastructure investment exceeded £165 million, delivering a range of infrastructure interventions and projects across several programmes. Details of this funding is available in the Active Travel Infrastructure Investment Report 2023-24.
2024-25 also saw significant reform to this funding. The Active Travel Infrastructure Fund Tier 1 was introduced, provided directly to LAs through their General Capital Grant, replacing the former Cycling, Walking, and Safer Routes fund (CWSR). The Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) Tier 2 was introduced as the primary vehicle for the Scottish Government to fund active travel infrastructure, shifting from the previous Places for Everyone programme. In supporting this funding our guidance has emphasised the importance of associated ‘demand stimulation’ activities, of the kind supported by the People & Place programme, and RTPs have been well placed to help align work across both areas. An Active Travel Infrastructure Investment Report 2024-25 will be published in due course.