Breaking the car-dependence trap: Policy mixes, structural constraints, and sustainable mobility performance across Italian provinces

Breaking car dependence is a key challenge for achieving sustainable urban mobility, but the adoption and effectiveness of policy frameworks to reduce reliance on private cars vary substantially across territories. This study examines these territorial differences across Italian provinces by combining socio-economic, institutional, environmental, and mobility indicators in a multi-stage empirical design. Specifically, propensity score matching is used to compare provinces that adopt a comprehensive sustainable mobility policy mix with otherwise similar provinces that adopt a narrower set of policy measures. Subsequently, data envelopment analysis assesses how efficiently provinces transform public transport, fleet quality, and mobility resources into sustainable mobility outcomes, specifically public transport demand and shared mobility availability. Finally, fractional logit and logistic models examine, respectively, the factors associated with efficiency and policy adoption. The results show that provinces adopting a broader policy mix display higher mobility efficiency scores. At the same time, car dependence emerges as a structural constraint and is associated with both lower mobility efficiency and a reduced likelihood of adopting such a policy mix. This cross-sectional study contributes to the literature by linking policy adoption, mobility-system efficiency, and structural car dependence within a single empirical framework. The findings suggest that effective transitions require coherent policy packages combined with targeted support for less affluent, less populous, and highly motorised territories