By offering the opportunity to make longer trips at a lower level of physical activity, the e-bike provides a promising alternative to car use. Despite all advantages (e-)cycling brings to urban accessibility, the environment, physical and mental health, not all car commuters regard the e-bike as a suitable alternative yet in their daily activity patterns. This study reports on changes in behavioral intention and actual e-cycling brought about by an e-cycling incentive program in the province of Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. The impact of the program on behavioral intention and the actual change to e-cycling were analyzed based on a longitudinal three-wave survey design on past, intended, and actual commuting behavior. To explore the changes in behavioral intentional, the differences between intention and actual behavior and the factors influencing them, descriptive and ordinal logistic regression analyses were conducted. To explore the dynamics between e-cycling intentions and behavior a longitudinal structural equation model was developed. In general, this study shows that the incentive program has a positive impact on participants’ behavioral change to e-cycling during the incentive program. Results show that two-third of the participants actually use the e-bike as much as they intended at the start of the program. People who were used to taking the conventional bicycle to work before the stimulation program, are more consistent between their intention and behavior. Results also show that personal beliefs, habits, and goal-related variables do not influence the intention–behavior consistency.

Objectives This paper proposes a conceptual model of the complex relationships between travel behaviour and health. In addition it gives a research agenda providing an overview of challenges for future research. Methods We review the relevant literature in the areas of public health, land use and transportation that address issues related to health and travel and their underlying mechanisms. We do not aim to give a full review of the literature but to underpin the conceptual model. Results and conclusions We conclude that research can easily come to the ‘wrong’ conclusions if the complex causal relationships that exist between relevant factors are overlooked. In particular, ignoring contradictory effects for specific socio-demographic groups, (residential) self-selection effects, substitutions of different forms of activity, and reverse causalities may lead to overestimation of the effect of policies. For example, travel-related physical activity might interact with other physical activity, self-selection effects may influence the complex relationships between travel behaviour and health, and people׳s health may influence their walking or cycling behaviour. Based on the conceptual model we present a research agenda. A first research challenge is to explore the combined effect of travel behaviour related determinants for health effects (physical activity, air pollution intake, injuries, and subjective well-being) on health. A second challenge is exploring the interactions between travel-related physical activity and other physical activity. Thirdly, the importance of attitudes and attitude formation, specifically health-related attitudes and self-selection processes related to travel behaviour, is an important research topic. Fourthly, it is important to explore the relationship between cycling levels and injury risks, because risks seem to be correlated with cycling levels: the more people cycle, the lower the injury risks. Fifthly, we think it is important to study the relevance of walking and cycling related self-selection effects. A sixth challenge relates to transport innovations.