Moving towards sustainability? Mobility styles, attitudes and individual travel behaviour

Future scenarios for the transport sector are increasingly confronted with the finite nature of fossil-based resources (petrol, natural gas) and an urgent need for reductions of negative transport-related effects (CO₂ and other exhaust emissions, noise, land consumption). In view of limited technical advances and efficiency improvements, along with growing traffic volumes, behavioural changes towards more sustainable travel futures have attained a crucial importance. This paper will discuss initial results from a 2-year project (funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council - ESRC) which aims to develop the notion of sustainability-related ‘mobility styles’ as a context for applying targeted social marketing policies to specific population segments. Based on ten focus group discussions and a survey of more than 1500 participants in the South West of England, two segmentation approaches are used to identify gaps between different domains of individual travel behaviour and the varying role of attitudes for travel decisions. The results demonstrate the usefulness and limitations of existing segmentation approaches and underline the need for more complex and comprehensive mobility style frameworks as basis for measures aiming at behavioural change towards sustainable mobility.     

The built environment,travel attitude,and travel behavior: Residential self-selection or residential determination?

In examining the impacts of the built environment on travel behavior, studies focused on residential self-selection mostly assume that people self-select residential built environment based on their travel preferences. However, the residential self-selection hypothesis is challenged for a number of reasons including the arguments that that at least in some societies a large percentage of people do not have the privilege to self-select their residence and the built environment may have a significant influence on a person's travel attitude. To shed some light on this debate, this paper makes use of data from a household activity-diary survey conducted in Beijing, China, in 2011–2012 to examine both the hypothesis of residential self-selection and that of residential environment determination. We adopt the natural experimental approach and divide the sample into two groups based on whether or not the respondents had much freedom in regard to choosing where to live: one with the possibility of self-selection and the other one without this possibility. We found reciprocal influences between residential built environment and travel attitude/preference for the first group and influence of residential built environment on travel preferences for the second group. We argue that the complex relationships between the built environment, travel attitude, and travel behavior are featured by both residential self-selection and residential determination. Failing to acknowledge the effects of the built environment on travel attitude may lead to the overestimation of the influence of residential self-selection on the link between the built environment and travel behavior and underestimation of the influence of the built environment on travel behavior.     

Interdependent,imagined, and embodied mobilities in mobile social space: Disruptions in ‘normality’, ‘habit’ and ‘routine’

This article draws on ethnographic research of everyday mobilities to further understanding of interdependent mobilities practices in relation to normality, habit and routine. The contention here is that a rethinking of ‘normality’, ‘habit’ and ‘routine’ reveals how mobilities are interdependent, imagined and embodied. We draw from Lefebvre's (1991) notions of social space and rhythmanalysis to illustrate the relationality of these aspects of mobility. In doing so, we build on recent theorisations of habit in the field of mobilities, which have opened this concept as a key site for interrogating body–society relationships arguing that both ‘routine’ and ‘normality’ have similar potential in revealing the regulation and control of everyday spaces. We consider everyday embodied engagements with mobile space and how these become normalised, habitualised and routinised. This paper draws from a Research Council UK Energy Programme funded project, ‘Disruption, the raw material for carbon change’, which uses ‘disruption’ as a lens through which to reveal potential for changes in mobility practices that result in carbon reduction. Our exploration of interdependent, imagined and embodied mobilities concurs with existing scholarship in the mobilities field that argues for a rethinking of individualised conceptions of ‘normality’, ‘habit’ and ‘routine’ in seeking an understanding of mobilities that are socially, culturally and materially contingent.     

Alternative railway futures: growth and/or specialisation?

Recent centuries have seen a succession of transport technologies, each offering improvements in speed, carrying capacity and/or operational flexibility. Having overcome many physical barriers to freedom of movement, humanity now faces two major, related challenges: dwindling reserves of fossil fuels, and anthropogenic climate change. In these circumstances, rail transport has significant potential advantages over the more energy-intensive modes of road and air.Railways dominated 19th century land transport, peaking in importance in the early 1900s. Market share then declined in the face of competition from road transport and aviation, although rail retained significant passenger and freight transport roles. Major improvements in railway operating efficiency were introduced later in the 20th century, including: the switch from steam to diesel and electric traction; containerisation and focus on long-haul, unit-train freight operations; and the development of high-speed passenger rail services in Japan and Europe, enabling rail to compete successfully with air travel over distances of up to 800 km.The UK Government’s Foresight Programme commissioned a report entitled Intelligent Infrastructure Futures, for which four scenarios were developed of how society might be in 2055. These scenarios are: ‘Perpetual Motion’, ‘Urban Colonies’, ‘Tribal Trading’ and ‘Good Intentions’, each having its own implications for the future of transport. This paper considers the implications of each scenario, and of the underlying/overriding issues of peak oil and climate change, for the possible role and significance of rail transport in meeting our transport needs in the mid-21st century and beyond.     

Sustainable Tourism or Sustainable Development? Financial Crisis,Ecotourism, and the 'Amazing Thailand' Campaign

Although the issues of sustainable tourism and sustainable development are receiving increasing attention from tourists, government planners and scholars, few studies have examined their overlap, tensions and complex linkages in practice. In southern Thailand, the sustainability of tourism, defined as the ongoing growth and survival of the tourism industry, has compromised the ecological sustainability of key tourism destinations sites. The recent financial crisis has forced the Thai government to sacrifice long-term sustainability for the sake of quick, and desperately needed foreign exchange. The 'Amazing Thailand' promotional campaign, which aims to attract 17 million tourists over 1998 and 1999, promises to exacerbate further the environmental degradation of tourism destinations in southern Thailand by pushing for enhanced tourist numbers. Ironically, by changing the composition of tourist arrivals (and in particular, attracting more European and North American tourists) the currency devaluations associated with the Asian financial crisis may simultaneously boost demand for nature-based tourist activities in southern Thailand while also adding stress to ecologically deteriorating destinations.     

Airline type and tourist expenditure: Are full service and low cost carriers converging or diverging?

Since some years ago low-cost carriers (LCCs) are becoming less and less low-cost-like, as well as full-service airlines are becoming less and less full-service-like, thus contributing to lessen the differences between users of one airline type and the other. LCCs have made air travel available to all budgets and enabled tourists to spend more at destination by reallocating their trip expenditure. The objective of this article is to observe if airline types have been converging regarding travellers’ expenditure allocation and total trip expenditure. We use repeated cross sections of the Spanish tourist expenditure survey between 2006 and 2014, and compositional data analysis with a total in order not to confound effects involving expenditure allocation with those involving expenditure volume. Results show that users of both airline types converge in their allocation of the trip budget (between transportation and at-destination expenses, and within at-destination expenses), but diverge with regard to total trip expenditure.     

Economic crisis and tourism competitiveness in Spain: permanent effects or transitory shocks?

This paper considers the influence of business cycles and economic crises on Spain's tourism competitiveness. This competitiveness is measured by its share in world tourism. Analysing the presence of unit roots in the market share series from 1958 to 2010, the permanent effects of economic crises on competitiveness are evaluated. The evidence from standard linear unit root tests indicates that crises on Spanish market shares are highly persistent. When we account for endogenously determined structural breaks, we obtain greater support for stationarity, but breakpoints are identified with major economic crises. Therefore the main conclusion obtained is that the effects of the economic shocks are not neutral on competitiveness, with the negative effects being more persistent in highly intensive crises. These crises reinforce a natural downward trend of the Spanish world tourism market share caused by the natural emergence of new competing destinations and by the maturity of the Spain's principal tourism product.     

International Mobility Biographies: A Means to Capture the Institutionalisation of Long-distance Travel?

An important aspect of current international travel and tourism is the degree to which they are becoming embedded as regularised and prescribed parts of the lives of individuals, families, and various organisations. At the individual and family levels, patterns of regularised international mobility often only manifest themselves on a time scale that far exceeds that of the reference periods normally used in long-distance travel surveys. Other methods are thus needed to address these issues. This paper discusses a particular method used in ongoing research into the international mobility of young Swedes. Students in the last year of upper secondary school are asked to formulate their international mobility biographies, i.e. all international trips conducted during their childhood and adolescence. The paper discusses the potential of such a ‘biographical approach’ to gathering information about various forms of the regularisation or institutionalisation of international mobility. The approach suggested is contextualised through a review of relevant biographically oriented concepts and approaches in the fields of mobility and tourism research. Methodological challenges involved in collecting information on travel behaviour retrospectively are then discussed, with reference to initial experience gained from research concerning the international mobility of young Swedes.     

“I am like a deaf,dumb and blind person”: Mobility and immobility of Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing,Queens, New York City

This paper contributes to research on daily mobility experience of (im)migrants in cities and expands the conceptualizations of mobility by examining intentionality and its relations to locality. Through place-based research on mobility and immobility of Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing, Queens, New York City, this paper explores: 1) mobility patterns of recent (im)migrants in an urban setting; 2) the constraints, resources and their coping strategies for everyday mobility; and 3) the dialectal relationship between voluntary and involuntary immobility, and between mobility and ethnic communities. This study reveals that immobility is not always the result of inaccessibility, but structural barriers in the broader society such as socioeconomic inequality and racial discrimination. Involuntary immobility encourages overdependence on locality. With its high place accessibility, Flushing provides (im)migrants with a plethora of ethnic mobile resources, as well as social networks and community resources. The relative immobility among Chinese (im)migrants in Flushing is compensated by the flows and movements of people, goods and information both at the local and transnational scale. The contrast between insider-ness and outsider-ness further enhances their attachment to the local community and discourages them from moving. Thus, locality mitigates involuntary immobility but paradoxically nurtures voluntary immobility that hinders the transfer of potential mobility to actual mobility, and physical mobility to social mobility. Without considering locality, stillness is easily mistaken for immobility; without considering intentionality, accessibility is easily equated to mobility. Therefore, solutions to transportation equity do not lie solely in transportation accessibility itself, but more broadly in individual capability, immigration policy, labor market equality and community development.     

Euston station redevelopment: Regeneration or gentrification?

The redevelopment of railways stations and their surrounding neighbourhoods offers many opportunities in terms of regeneration, yet there are also concerns over the potential gentrification of areas and displacement of the existing population and local businesses. The most prominent voice on these issues is typically from the project promoter, reflecting their position of power in the decision-making process, but there are other voices to be understood, including varied views from the local community.This paper uses Q methodology to develop discourses associated with the proposed High Speed Two project and redevelopment of Euston station and the surrounding neighbourhoods. 28 in-depth surveys are used with local residents, local employees, politicians, local government officers and academics, covering attitudes to the proposed Euston redevelopment. The Q method analysis highlights three major discourses: the ‘Community Activist’, the ‘Rail Promoter’, and the ‘Optimistic Practitioner’. Understanding these different discourses, and their components, is important for decision-makers in ensuring that investment strategies can better reflect the different viewpoints evident in the public domain. Ultimately, this can help to improve the social consequences of transport investment.     

Hostility or hospitality? A review on violence,bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry

The present work reviews the current knowledge about violence, bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry. It indicates the high prevalence of these aggressive behaviours, and identifies structural reasons, insufficient managerial skills and/or common beliefs as their causes. The negative impacts of bullying, violence and sexual harassment on employees include intentions to leave and psychological upset. These personal negative feelings and attitudes contribute to negative organizational performance indicators, such as high staff turnover rate and low profitability. In addition, the high prevalence of violence creates a negative image for the tourism and hospitality industry in general. The review shows that intervention plans are scattered in aims and time frames, focus mainly on managerial policies, and almost completely overlook immediate actions as well as guest violence. Given its importance, the low number of appropriate intervention tools, policies and agendas clearly suggests the urgent need for more research. The final section of the work provides an overview of three core themes that can potentially contribute to the development of an effective intervention agenda, namely, corporate social responsibility, social media and comparisons to other sectors.     

Tourism-induced mobilities and transformation of indigenous cultures: where is the Vedda community in Sri Lanka heading to?*

ABSTRACT

Mobilities that encapsulate global- and local-level movement of people, capital, information, material and intangible heritage across boundaries influence distant socio-cultural structures and processes linking them to evolving global networks. Indigenous cultural tourism is a catalyst of mobilities that expose the habitats of distant spaces. This paper examines the Vedda community’s concurrent context and indigenous tourism-informed mobilities’ contributions to transforming their cultural character through anthropological approaches. Data were collected through a series of interviews, overt observation and review of documents. Findings indicate that the Vedda are susceptible to the influence of mobilities within and without the indigenous tourism practices. Enforced restructuring and governance push Vedda towards novel livelihoods, while automobilities, image, communication and geopolitical mobilities challenge Vedda heritage and temporalities. Vedda lead a hybrid life; real one being modern and the other being pseudo attributed for tourist attraction. Indigenous cultural tourism causes losing the inherited meaning of their cultural values. The Vedda, with their anatomically proven Mesolithic inheritance, have drawn world’s attention to preserving and recognizing them before their unique culture is subsumed by the modern world. Findings indicate that tourism planners should realize the significance of distinctive Vedda heritage parallel to commercial gains of tourism.     

Global air travel: toward concentration or dispersal?

The geography of airline passenger movement through the major cities of the world has changed between 1990 and 2000. The change has been at the expense of the very large global cities and major hubs in favour of a group of next largest cities. It has been detected by comparing the shares of total passenger movement through cities in two separate ways, and by exploring changes in the connectivity between cities over a similar time period. The new pattern reflects the use of new aircraft technology, changes in the location of demand for air travel associated with a broadening in the global linkages between cities, new regulatory arrangements and airline corporate strategies. The implications are that the pressures for airport planning will be felt in a new set of cities, although because the share of passenger traffic through the very large global cities is still high they will remain a major focus for airport planning and management action in the immediate future.     

Third-party remanufacturing mode selection: Outsourcing or authorization?

Many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) allow third-party remanufacturers (3PRs) to perform remanufacturing operations of branded or patented products – through either outsourcing or authorization. This study compares these two modes by modeling the game between the OEM and the 3PR on equilibrium quantities, prices, and profits. The results suggest that when consumers perceive the remanufactured products with a low value, the 3PR prefers the authorization approach; otherwise the 3PR prefers the outsourcing approach. However, in both scenarios, the OEM obtains higher profit through outsourcing than through authorization. Our further analysis compares two modes’ impacts on consumer surplus, social welfare, and environment.     

Microstories of everyday mobilities and opportunities in Bogotá: A tool for bringing capabilities into urban mobility planning

The Capabilities Approach is gaining relevance as a theoretical approach that can contribute to consider issues of mobility and justice. The approach helps to better understand how everyday urban mobility can contribute to individuals' capabilities, that is, their ability to freely be and do what one has reason to value. However, in relation to mobility the Capabilities Approach is still missing operational tools that can consider individual specificities and go beyond aggregate evaluations of urban transport systems. Drawing on a research project on urban mobility and human capabilities in Bogotá, the paper discusses how microstories of individual everyday mobilities could be a suitable analytical tool for describing the plural relationship between mobilities and capabilities. Microstories, defined as short accounts of personal everyday mobility experiences, help to account for the features that facilitate or impede individual mobility, and consider the manifold uses of mobility as achieved by each person, according to one's individual choices. The paper discusses three potential contributions of microstories: integrating established evaluative approaches, such as accessibility measures; providing elements for the design of more effective policy actions; expressing features of the mobility experience that, despite their relevance for personal preferences and behaviours, are difficult to include within aggregate evaluations. The usability of microstories as interpretative and operational tools is examined in the light of the obtained results and in relation to policy making processes.     

Carless in California: Green choice or misery?

Approximately 1 million Californian households do not own a motor vehicle (hereafter a “car”). These households, who are often forgotten in transportation policy discussions, can be organized into two groups based on whether they are voluntarily carless or not. Understanding why some households decide to voluntarily forgo cars could inform policies aiming at reducing our dependency on cars. Understanding the plight of households who are not able to own a car is no less important as these households are at greater risk of social exclusion. Unfortunately, our knowledge of carless households is still sketchy so the purpose of this paper is to start filling this gap. We analyze data from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey using univariate tests and Generalized Structural Equation Models (GSEM) that account for residential self-selection to assess the impacts of various socio-economic and built environment variables on the likelihood to be carless, voluntarily or not. Our results (GSEM Model 1) indicate that carless households are more likely to have less education, a lower income, and a smaller number of members than motorized families. They also tend to live in denser, more land-use diverse, and more walkable areas with better transit coverage. Contrasting voluntarily and involuntarily carless households (GSEM Model 3), we find that involuntarily carless households are less affluent on average and they tend to live in areas that are less land-use diverse, less walkable, and with worse transit coverage. Finally, although residential self-selection is present, its impacts are minor.     

Enhancing equitable service level: Which can address better,dockless or dock-based Bikeshare systems?

Dockless bikeshare systems show potential for replacing traditional dock-based systems, primarily by offering greater flexibility for bike returns. However, many cities in the US currently regulate the maximum number of bikes a dockless system can deploy due to bicycle management issues. Despite inventory management challenges, dockless systems offer two main advantages over dock-based systems: a lower (sometimes zero) membership fee, and being free-range (or, at least free-range within designated service areas). Moreover, these two advantages may help to solve existing access barriers for disadvantaged populations. To date, much of the research on micro-mobility options has focused on addressing equity issues in dock-based systems. We have limited knowledge of the extent to which dockless systems can help mitigate barriers to bikeshare for disadvantaged populations. Using San Francisco as a case study, because the city has both dock-based and dockless systems running concurrently, we quantify bikeshare service levels for communities of concern (CoCs) by analyzing the spatial distribution of service areas, available bikes and bike idle times, trip data, and rebalancing among dock-based and dockless systems. We find that dockless systems can provide greater availability of bikes for CoCs than for other communities, attracting more trip demand in these communities because of a larger service area and frequent bike rebalancing practices. More importantly, we notice that the existence of electric bikes helps mitigate the bikeshare usage gap between CoCs and other tracts. Our results provide policy insights to local municipalities on how to properly regulate dockless bikeshare systems to improve equity.     

Dive Tourism and Local Communities: Active Participation or Subject to Impacts? Case Studies from Malaysia

Dive tourism impacts were examined in three Malaysian islands: Perhentian (backpackers), Redang (package tourism) and Mabul (upmarket dive tourism). Qualitative local participation approaches were applied to investigate whether host communities were merely reactive to dive tourism's impacts. Dive tourism affected many aspects of community life. Besides physical/ environmental impacts (new infrastructure), research found varied economic impacts including employment/business opportunities and differing economic linkages. Participation varied between locations, and obstacles to increased participation were revealed. Mainly negative socio‐cultural impacts were observed with minimal participation in cultural productions (handicrafts, performances). However, positive educational impacts emerged, especially environmental awareness and English language acquisition. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.