When health risks meet habits: COVID-19 as a natural experiment in older adults’ use of local public transport in Italy

A few years after the closing down of the pandemic, the demand recovery for urban public transportation is uncertain and not widely documented, especially among the older population strongly reliant on transit to reach healthcare and social inclusion places in cities. Following habit formation theory and treating the Covid-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to test the older adults’ survival of travel routine after a health shock, this research uses primary data collected in three Northern-Italy cities and investigates the linkage between revealed and stated-intention mobility facing health risks. First, physical accessibility and cost affordability are found as triggers for the use of public transit for healthcare destinations, while digitalisation for transport services and the lack of social welfare spaces in the residence neighbourhoods might raise the odds of using transit to inclusion purposes. Second, we detect correlations between revealed preferences and stated intentions, identifying latent mobility linkages with past habits in later life that might persist even after major disruptions and calling for potential bounce-back of public transport for older adults in the long-run. Besides complementing post-pandemic trends for which transit use has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, this research focuses on healthcare and socialization trips to enhance localized transport policies and foster active ageing.