Why Canadians cycle more than Americans: A comparative analysis of bicycling trends and policies

In spite of their colder climate, Canadians cycle about three times more than Americans. The main reasons for this difference are Canada's higher urban densities and mixed-use development, shorter trip distances, lower incomes, higher costs of owning, driving and parking a car, safer cycling conditions, and more extensive cycling infrastructure and training programs. Most of these factors result from differences between Canada and the United States in their transport and land-use policies, and not from intrinsic differences in history, culture or resource availability. That is good news, since it suggests the possibility of significantly increasing cycling levels in the United States by adopting some of the Canadian policies that have so effectively promoted cycling and enhanced its safety.     

International arrivals to Australia: Determinants and the role of air transport policy

Air transport policy, national income, bilateral trade volume, distance, common language and immigration are significant determinants of international arrivals to Australia. The close link between aviation policy and the number of international travellers might suggest that Australia has benefited from the liberalisation of the airline industry globally in recent decades.     

Excess commuting: a critical review and comparative analysis of concepts,indices, and policy implications

The last three decades have witnessed substantial growth in the literature on excess commuting. Researchers have proposed and applied a number of commuting benchmarks and excess commuting indices that aim to evaluate the commuting efficiency and jobs-housing balance of cities. A comprehensive review and comparative evaluation of the proposed metrics in terms of their ability to capture the intended phenomena, while controlling for the other general characteristics of cities, has yet to be performed. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining four commuting benchmarks (minimum commute, maximum commute, random commute, and proportionally matched commute) and five excess commuting indices (excess commute, commuting potential utilized, commuting economy, normalized commuting economy, and effort). Our conceptual analysis of the indices is complemented with a comparative empirical analysis of commuting in thirty Canadian cities. We explore relationships between the indices and point out the strengths and limitations of each. The findings suggest that no single index can adequately capture the commuting performance of an urban area, while each index can be employed to address a specific policy question. Used together, the indices can provide a reasonably good understanding of urban form and commuting behavior.     

Why sustainable transport policies will fail: EU climate policy in the light of transport taboos

There is widespread consensus that current climate policy for passenger transportation is insufficient to achieve significant emission reductions in line with global climate stabilization goals. This article consequently has a starting point in the notion of ‘path dependency’ (Schwanen et al., 2011) and an observed ‘implementation gap’ (Banister and Hickman, 2013), suggesting that significant mitigation policies for transport do not emerge in the European Union because of various interlinked ‘transport taboos’, i.e. barriers to the design, acceptance and implementation of such transport policies that remain unaddressed as they constitute political risk. The paper argues that without addressing transport taboos, such as highly unequal individual contributions to transport volumes and emissions, social inequality of planned market-based measures, the role of lobbyism, and the various social and psychological functions of mobility, it will remain difficult to achieve significant emission reductions in passenger transport. Yet, transport taboos remain largely ignored among EU policy makers because their discussion would violate ‘order’, i.e. harm specific interests within neoliberal governance structures and the societal foundations and structures of transport systems built on these.     

Traveler dress and styles in India: a comparative study

In independent travel studies, the evolution of traveler culture has recently been one of the main research focuses. One aspect of the evolution considers the outer appearance of the travelers. An appearance may reflect traveler preferences and activities, and may also portray membership in a traveler subculture. In a survey conducted in Kerala, India, the dress and styles of independent Western travelers was studied by two samples: 30 interviews and 118 photographs. The survey was a comparative follow-up of another such study made in 1990s, in Rajasthan. According to the Kerala results, the travelers had become both more culture-sensitive and professional. Casual styles dominated in the increasingly touristic middle-class scene, together with a significant preference for outdoors attires. A countercultural ethos had survived, barely, in a secondary role, without deep commitment. Overall, the comparative analysis revealed both changes and similarities, in terms of women's dress codes and dressing according to occasion. Interestingly, the development toward a digitally connected flashpacker culture, often thought to be a major recent trend of independent travel, had gained unexpectedly limited ground in India.     

Regional aviation and economic growth: cointegration and causality analysis in Australia

Air transport is a critical link to regional, rural and remote communities in Australia. Air services provide important economic and social benefits but very little research has been done on assessing the value of regional aviation. This research provides the first empirical evidence that there is short and long run causality between regional aviation and economic growth. The authors analysed 88 regional airports in Australia over a period of 1985–86 to 2010–11 to determine the catalytic impacts of regional air transport on regional economic growth. The analysis was conducted using annual data related to total airport passenger movements – for the level of airport activity, and real aggregate taxable income – to represent economic growth. A significant bi-directional relationship was established: airports have an impact on regional economic growth and the economy directly impacts regional air transport. The economic significance of regional air transport confirms the importance of the airport as infrastructure for regional councils and the need for them to maintain and develop local airports. Funding should be targeted at airports directly to support regional development.     

Evolution trends of the network structure of Spring Airlines in China: A temporal and spatial analysis

Both the sustainable development of China's economy and the deregulation of the China air transport market have acted as a spur for the halting development of low-cost carriers (LCCs) in China. To analyze the development trends of LCCs' network in China, this paper took Spring Airlines, the only LCC in China as an example. First, the winter flight plans of Spring Airlines from 2005 to 2013 were collected. Secondly, the development trends of air transport network of Spring Airlines were explored with methods of mathematical statistics and social network analysis. Additionally, the development trends were analyzed from the levels of navigable cities, air routes and air transport networks. The results show that although Spring Airlines actively launched air routes between tourist cities with non-class I airports, its network has been transformed from a star structure into a complex one with multi-hubs. The development process of the Spring Airlines network can be separated into three stages. In addition, the problems and evolution trends of its network are discussed further.     

The link between urban development and the modal split in commuting: the case of Biscay

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the links between different land use patterns and the modal split in commuting. The analysis is conducted at municipal level, based on data on land use and mobility characteristics of the de-urbanisation process in Biscay, a small European province, from 1991 to 2001. The links are assessed by means of multiple regression analysis, in which specific techniques of spatial econometrics are applied in order to avoid biased results and unreliable inferences due to spatial dependence. The findings reveal, at municipal level, the importance of gross population density, geographic concentration of the population and, to a lesser extent, the ratio of jobs to residents in explaining the modal split in commuting, and the influence of access to public transport. It is also shown that public transport services have spillover effects that extend beyond the limits of the municipality and encourage use in adjacent areas.     

Shortest path or anchor-based route choice: a large-scale empirical analysis of minicab routing in London

Understanding and modelling route choice behaviour is central to predicting the formation and propagation of urban road congestion. Yet within conventional literature disagreements persist around the nature of route choice behaviour, and how it should be modelled. In this paper, both the shortest path and anchor-based perspectives on route choice behaviour are explored through an empirical analysis of nearly 700,000 minicab routes across London, United Kingdom. In the first set of analyses, the degree of similarity between observed routes and possible shortest paths is established. Shortest paths demonstrate poor performance in predicting both observed route choice and characteristics. The second stage of analysis explores the influence of specific urban features, named anchors, in route choice. These analyses show that certain features attract more route choices than would be expected were individuals choosing route based on cost minimisation alone. Instead, the results indicate that major urban features form the basis of route choice planning – being selected disproportionately more often, and causing asymmetry in route choice volumes by direction of travel. At a finer scale, decisions made at minor road features are furthermore demonstrated to influence routing patterns. The results indicate a need to revisit the basis of how routes are modelled, shifting from the shortest path perspective to a mechanism structured around urban features. In concluding, the main trends are synthesised within an initial framework for route choice modelling, and presents potential extensions of this research.     

Risks and marketing in online transactions: a qualitative comparative analysis

The article focuses on the perspectives of holidaymakers who have used internet to book a part or the whole spectrum of their holidays' accommodation. Using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), the research examines the complex relations between product and web-vendor risks, and marketing activities on consumer trust, also employing predictive validity. It examines the perspectives of 735 holidaymakers returning to Manchester International Airport, through the use of structured questionnaires. The findings reveal three sufficient configurations dealing with the focus on the impact of price and quality relationships, the influence of product and web-vendor risks on consumer trust, and the importance of marketing for the minimization of perceived risks in online tourism shopping. Theoretically, the study contributes on the understanding of online decisions’ complexity, and explores the attributes that affect accommodation e-purchasing and associated linkages. Methodologically, it implements QCA, which is new in tourism and hospitality domain. It also progresses from fit to predictive validity, an analysis that only a handful of studies has implemented in the service industry.     

Representing protected areas: a critical discourse analysis of tourism destination building in a Greek travel magazine

The present paper examines the way protected areas are constructed as tourism destinations by the information sources (i.e. a Greek travel magazine) that are consumed by potential visitors to such areas. Specifically, it explores what form of tourism is proposed for virtual visitors, whether it is ecotourism (i.e. both tourism and environmentalism) or simply a nature‐based one (i.e. exclusively tourism). Examining the way a Greek travel magazine builds protected areas as tourism destinations, and consequently what expectations are created for readers and potential visitors to such areas, the focus of the present paper is on whether the media contribute to the failure on the part of visitors to protected areas, who are the majority of the people engaging in ecotourism activities, to incorporate environmentalist besides tourism pursuits in their travel experiences. The analysis suggests that the travel magazine cultivates the view that other protected areas (with a tradition in mass tourism) are suitable for nature‐based tourism, others (with great ecological interest) for environmentalism, but few for ecotourism. This means that visitors to protected areas will probably have a difficulty in combining tourism with environmentalist pursuits, rather than in developing environmentalist concerns in general. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Urban sprawl and social interaction potential: an empirical analysis of large metropolitan regions in the United States

This paper investigates the impact of urban spatial structure on the opportunities for people to participate in face-to-face activities. We make use of the Social Interaction Potential (SIP) metric, a tool to measure the average level of opportunity for people to engage in face-to-face activities given some basic constraints on their daily mobility patterns. Generally, this opportunity is a reflection of whether the urban spatial structure – a term that broadly applies to the spatial arrangement of land-uses and the interactions between them – constrains or permits the ability for potential activity partners to be at the same place and time. In this paper, the SIP metric is applied to 42 metropolitan regions in the United States with populations over 1,000,000 people. These measurements are regressed against a set of indicators of urban sprawl to expose the relationship between spatial structure and SIP. The indicators are generated by a factor analysis of a large set of variables describing the scale, centrality and dispersion of land-uses in addition to several other structural and infrastructure-related variables. Cluster analysis is also used to organize the regions into similar groupings with respect to their structural characteristics and the level of SIP they provide. The findings indicate that social interaction potential is hampered by decentralization, fragmentation, and longer commutes in the largest metropolitan regions in the country. Interestingly, the negative effect of decentralization on SIP Efficiency is found to be nearly ten times stronger than that of fragmentation and nearly 20 times stronger than the effect of mean commuting duration.     

Explaining changes and trends in the airline industry: Economies of density,multiproduct scale,and spatial scope

Changes in the shape and size of airline networks have not been explained clearly from a cost perspective based on the finding of increasing returns to density for given route structures and constant returns to scale for variable network size. We reassessed the estimates of these economies by using new scale and scope indices, finding savings due to changes in route structures and various types of economies of spatial scope not previously calculated: network size, trunk-local services and domestic-international services. Results contribute new insights on the role of cost incentives in the observed changes and trends in the airline industry.     

Jobs-housing balance in an era of population decentralization: An analytical framework and a case study

Despite the well-established theoretical understanding on the benefits of compact cities to the attainment of sustainable transport goals, there has been a worldwide trend of population decentralization in cities. In this paper, an analytical framework, which can be applied to other cities to quantify the potential commuting travel savings and environmental benefits of different job policies in cities having different rates and patterns of population decentralization, is presented. A case study of Hong Kong in the 1992-2002 decade is used to illustrate the analytical framework. The findings suggest that a city’s population patterns did have significant implications on the commuting travel savings from alternative job relocation policies. With a dispersed population pattern, the expected environmental benefits from a job decentralization policy can be very substantial.     

Managing complexity and change in tourism: the case of a historic city†

Europe's historic cities face many challenges, including those associated with growing pressure from tourist interest. This paper reviews the general issues for historic cities with significant tourist activity, and then examines the background, purposes and future direction of the English city of Canterbury's visitor management initiative. An open, soft systems model is used to clarify the differing significance of the initiative for selected stakeholder groups with interests in the city, its society, economy, environment and ecology. The significance of the Canterbury City Centre Initiative for other European walled and historic cities is considered briefly in the context of wider town centre management initiatives, and the linkages to wider city planning processes that it exemplifies. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Household decision-making for everyday travel: a case study of walking and cycling in Lancaster (UK)

Increased walking and cycling for short journeys in urban areas has many obvious advantages yet so far gains from the promotion of more sustainable travel of this type are mostly small. This paper reports on a large research project which uses a mixed method approach to explore attitudes to and perceptions of walking and cycling, and which examines the process of household decision-making for everyday travel and the constraints that this imposes. Using survey, interview and ethnographic data it is argued that many people hold ambiguous and sometimes contradictory views of walking and cycling as effective means of everyday travel, that what they do rarely matches precisely what they believe, and that the complexity and contingency associated with everyday travel for many households is a major barrier to the use of more sustainable travel modes. It is suggested that better understanding of these processes could help to inform both future transport policy and the promotion of walking and cycling for short trips in urban areas.     

Visual tourism and post-colonialism: imaginative geographies of Africa in a Portuguese travel magazine

This paper is about tourism, visual culture, and imperialism in the post-colonial present. International literature on these issues has been especially focused on the experience of British and French post-colonialism. Few studies have addressed this issue regarding other post-colonial realities. This paper runs counter to that fact by analysing the visual touristic discourse produced in the post-colonial Portugal. The paper examines the way the sub-Saharan Africa is represented in a Portuguese travel photo-magazine – the Blue Travel magazine – so as to verify the extent to which the ideology of colonialism continues to shape the post-colonial touristic discourse in this former colonizing country of the southern Europe. More than 522 photographs were analysed. Using visual methodologies, the paper concludes that many aspects of the photographs contain encoded encomiastic messages of colonialism and participate in a discursive construction of Africa that was clearly shaped by an imperialist gaze. The paper suggests that not only there is an obvious nostalgia for empire in the Portuguese touristic discourse on sub-Saharan Africa, but also that many imperialist myths continue to circulate diffusely within the Portuguese post-colonial society and to shape the way sub-Saharan Africa is touristically imagined.     

Marketing performance measurement in hotels,travel agencies and tour operators: a study of current practices

As successful tourism firms invest heavily in marketing to defend or improve their competitive position, they increasingly need to measure their marketing performance. Previous studies related to tourism have largely focused on financial and operational performance, but the marketing perspective has been largely overlooked. Drawing on an in-depth investigation involving 12 hotel chains, 8 travel agencies and 8 tour operators, this study provides an overview of the state-of-the-art marketing performance measurements among some of the leading tourism firms in Italy. Several issues and unanswered questions are also identified.