Volunteer tourism: at the crossroads of commercialisation and service?

Volunteer tourism as a phenomenon and as a market has come a long way since its ideologically driven early days. It is now an established and ever commercialised market that meets the demand for a different travel experience for the more morally conscious traveller, while at the same time it provides opportunities for economic gain for the organisations that act as brokers of such experiences. This interaction raises several ethical issues in terms of serving a mission while making economic gains. In general, there is an acceptable relationship between monetary gain and altruistic service, within the context of enlightened self-interest provided that the beneficiary of economic gains diverts profits into serving their mission. This paper examines the supply for volunteer tourism for evidence of commercialisation and profit-driven behaviour and investigates a relationship between monetary gain and serving a mission by creating public goods.     

Road traffic noise in Montreal and environmental equity: What is the situation for the most vulnerable population groups?

Road traffic noise is one of the most detrimental environmental nuisances for the population. Prolonged exposure to high road noise levels can lead to various problems in people's health and well-being. The objective of this article is to determine whether the groups most vulnerable to road noise, that is, children under 15 years old, people 65 years old and over, and the groups most likely to experience high nuisance levels, visible minorities and low-income individuals, are affected by an environmental inequity related to this nuisance. The method of estimating this nuisance employed in the study is based on a combination of several elements: that is, average traffic flows, road geometries, normal atmospheric conditions, and the characteristics of the urban environment. All of these parameters were considered for the 14 boroughs that make up the central portion of the Island of Montreal. Modelling was used to calculate the maximum daily road noise, based in part on the LimA software predictive model and according to the XPS 31-133 computation method. The results obtained from three different statistical tests and spatial regression analyses show that, on the one hand, the groups chosen on the basis of age are not affected by any environmental inequity related to the phenomenon of road traffic noise. On the other hand, low-income individuals and visible minorities live in city blocks marked by road traffic noise levels that are slightly higher than those experienced by the rest of the population.     

Mergers and service quality in the airline industry: A silver lining for air travelers?

We examine the relationship between mergers in the US domestic market and service quality, as measured through late flights, mishandled bags, involuntary boarding denials and flight cancellations. We find that in the immediate years following a merger, service quality generally deteriorates, and that the drop in service is due simultaneously to the merger and the increased concentration of the market. Thus, recent mergers in the US, including Delta and Northwest, United and Continental, Southwest and AirTran, have likely resulted in increased market concentration and decreased service levels. From a public policy perspective, our results point to the importance of regulators monitoring airline actions, such as mergers and acquisitions, that serve to increase the concentration of markets, and may also result in decreased service quality.     

Why we fail to reduce urban road traffic volumes: Does it matter how planners frame the problem?

If the objective of reducing urban road traffic volumes and GHG emissions from traffic is to be achieved, the way in which land use and transport systems in cities are planned and developed needs to change. Despite apparent agreement that this should be done and how it could be done, cities continue to be planned and developed in ways that cause and allow growth in urban road traffic volumes. In this paper we ask how planners frame the ‘transport problem’, and how their framing of the problem affects urban planning, the resulting plans and developments and the urban road traffic volumes. The discussions are based on findings from a case study, a survey and interviews with planning practitioners.     

Can freeway traffic volume information facilitate urban accessibility assessment?: Case study of the city of St. Louis

In urban contexts, accessibility measures are often utilized to represent the interactions among land use, transport and people’s trips to services and other facilities. Accessibility is generally evaluated using conventional traffic measures such as travel time and distance, but traffic volume, which is a product of the travel trips induced by people’s needs, may also be positively related to accessibility. This study tests the hypothesis “can freeway traffic volume information facilitate urban accessibility assessment?” Traffic volume based accessibility models are proposed to investigate this relationship and test the hypothesis. The results indicate that the answer to this question is a qualified “yes”, as there is a statistically significant relationship between traffic volume differences and accessibility. The coefficients of the models can potentially be used as a reference to guide the urban planning process. The limitations of the proposed models can be addressed by deploying Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) traffic sensors on ramps and arterial roadways.     

Offsite passenger service facilities: A viable option for airport access?

Offsite passenger service facilities transfer passengers from a common location to an airport and may provide additional services such as baggage handling and passenger check-in. Although they are conceptually promising, there is a lack of modern methods specifically tailored to forecast their demand. This paper reports on the development of two sequential models that forecast demand for an offsite facility. Models were calibrated based on data collected at six airports in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia. The results showed that likely candidates for an offsite facility are airports that are not easily accessible, and departing air passengers with early morning flight departure times and high variability in ground travel times to the airport. A case study demonstrates the application of the models to Virginia’s Richmond International Airport.     

Does the nature of airport terminal service activities matter? Processing and non-processing service quality,passenger affective image and satisfaction

The surge in air transport demand and the increasingly competitive and volatile market dynamics due to airline deregulation are rapidly transforming airports’ character into multi-service firms and destinations. As a result, service performance measurement of significant systems and their consequent impact on airport users are crucial in creating better airport service design, operation and management for sustainable competitive advantage. The present study 1) assesses the applicability of the Airport Indicators of Passenger Experience (AIPEX) model on Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG), and 2) tests a theoretical model that explores the direct and indirect relationships among airport service quality, passenger affective image and satisfaction, as well as the moderating mechanism of passenger type (travel purpose) in these associations. The results indicate that, the AIPEX model fits the PVG context for airport service performance assessment. Also, the theoretical model suggests robust direct associations among processing/non-processing domains and passenger satisfaction, as well as the processing domain and passenger affective image, except non-processing domain and passenger affective image relation. Moreover, significant mediating and moderating effects of passenger affective image and travel purpose on the significant positive direct associations are found. Further, implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Is traffic congestion overrated? Examining the highly variable effects of congestion on travel and accessibility

Congestion is universally unpopular, but is it always a problem? Are some places more “congestion-adapted” than others? Using data for Los Angeles, we examine whether the geographies of congestion and accessibility are distinct by mapping and describing them across neighborhoods. We then estimate a series of regression models of trip-making to test the net effects of traffic delays on behavior. We find that there are places where people make many trips and engage in many activities despite lots of congestion, which tend to be more central, built-up areas that host many short trips; in other places, high congestion and low activity coincide. Why the variance? While congestion can constrain mobility and reduce accessibility, traffic is also associated with agglomerations of activity and is thus a byproduct of proximity-based accessibility. Whether agglomeration and congestion have net positive or negative impacts on activity participation thus varies substantially over space. Controlling for factors such as income and working at home, we find that the effects of congestion on access depend on whether congestion-adaptive travel choices (such as walking and making shorter trips to nearby destinations) are viable. Because “congestion-adapted” places tend to host more trip-making, planners may be justified in creating more such places in order to increase accessibility, even if doing so makes absolute levels of congestion worse in the process.     

Consequences of logistics sprawl: Order or chaos? - the case of a parcel service company in Paris metropolitan area

Logistics sprawl is the phenomenon driving warehouses and freight terminals further and further away from city centers, for reasons that are mostly dependent on urban planning, field price and economies of scale. In the past, studies have already described logistics sprawl in Paris Metropolitan area. These studies have concluded that logistic facilities far from Paris city center increased the distance travelled, and by extension, CO₂ emissions. This study does not question logistics sprawl in Paris metropolitan area but questions its consequences.This study presents a point of view on the location of cross-docking terminals. One main parcel service carrier was studied through a database strong of 600,000 inputs including pick-ups and deliveries for two months in the Paris metropolitan area. This study is not intended to be representative of all merchandise flows but makes it possible to understand the running of one significant actor. This project aims at determining the optimum terminals location according to two criteria: minimization of the total distance as calculated by the Euclidean distance (as the crow flies) between terminals and points of pick-up/ delivery, and the number of authorized terminals. The number of terminals is modified to study its relationship with the spatial distribution of its clients.Interestingly, we found that optimized locations for this parcel service carrier are located outside of Paris city center. Those locations minimize the total distance to the clients, and thus, are the best places to limit pollution. The reason is that the carrier manages this perimeter through a polycentric organization. Paris Metropolitan area is viewed as several sectors and not as a whole for this carrier. It is therefore unknown how the carrier's performance has evolved over time, but its current organization is close to the optimal situation.     

Are they telling the truth? Revealing hidden traits of satisfaction with a public bike-sharing service

Public bike-sharing systems (BSSs) are an emerging mode of transportation introduced by municipalities to solve congestion problems in metropolitan areas, especially when integrated with other types of transportation. In the last years, the number of public bike-sharing services has been constantly on the rise all over the world, and generally the overall satisfaction with them is high. However, satisfaction with public services is driven by mechanisms that can differ from those in the private sector. It is important to establish to what extent a high satisfaction is genuine or simply ephemeral. Even “old” public services (like public transportation) become “gold” when accompanied by the introduction of new technologies. In this paper we analyze this phenomenon using data from a satisfaction web-survey conducted among customers of the public BSS “BikeMi” in Milan, Italy, in a period when mobile technologies have been introduced to speed up the service. On analyzing the responses to satisfaction questions using simple summary statistics, the level of satisfaction resulted very high. However, our aim was to look for potential “darker” sides of the service by detecting possible hidden satisfaction components. For this purpose, we used the Nonlinear Principal Components Analysis, which is particularly powerful in this context. A simple textual analysis was also performed as a validating test. Results from our analysis indicated that satisfaction is flawed by a set of factors like the mechanics of the bikes, the picking and dropping system, and the apps used to organize the service. Less concern was detected for more general aspects of the service.     

A comparative study of airport connectivity in China,Europe and US: Which network provides the best service to passengers?

This paper investigates the connectivity of the airport networks in China, Europe and US. Our aim is to analyze which network is most beneficial to final passengers in terms of travel time and which of the network features lead to such a result. A time-dependent minimum path approach is employed to calculate the minimum travel time between each pair of airports in the three networks, inclusive of flight times and waiting times in intermediate airports. We evaluate each fastest indirect connection in terms of waiting times and routing factors to consider the effect of the hubs’ coordination and locations. The Chinese network provides the quickest travels for passengers, but this performance is explained by a small number of airports per inhabitant. The US network is the most coordinated when considering indirect connections. The EU network provides the most homogeneous level of service when comparing airports of different sizes.     

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.     

SOCO's impact on service outcomes of tour guides: the moderating effect of customers’ shopping orientation

This research examines the effects of both sales-oriented and customer-oriented service strategies of tour guides on service outcomes: rapport, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and willingness to tip. This research also investigates how customers’ shopping orientation moderates the above relationships. A convenience sampling was conducted and 370 valid questionnaires were obtained. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The findings are as follows: (1) customer-oriented strategy of tour guides has a significantly positive impact on the service outcomes; (2) selling-oriented strategy of tour guides has a significantly negative impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty; and (3) shopping orientation of tour members moderates the relationships between selling orientation and service outcomes. Thus, if tour guides can provide service for customers in a suitable way, they will then improve the customers’ perception of services. These findings provide practical information for travel agencies and tour guides.     

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.     

Environmental determinants of cycling: Not seeing the forest for the trees?

In recent years, the volume of studies in the fields of transport and urban planning seeking to identify environmental determinants or correlates of cycling has expanded dramatically. This viewpoint wishes to put forward a provocative argument: namely, that while further research in this area might refine our theoretical understanding of certain issues, it is unlikely to deliver any fundamentally new policy-relevant insights as to what measures need to be taken in order to increase urban cycling rates. At present, the difficulties faced by the vast majority of cities across the world in encouraging cycling are not derived from a lack of theoretical knowledge, but are fundamentally practical and political in nature. From a practical perspective, I argue that we already know enough about what needs to be done in order to encourage cycling in the vast majority of urban contexts. The problem with the seemingly endless proliferation of research on the relationship between cycling and environmental characteristics, I suggest, is that it risks giving the impression that there is some fundamental unresolved uncertainty about what is needed to make a city more cycling-friendly, when this is simply not the case. Instead of focusing on cycling itself, I suggest that exploring the phenomenon of traffic evaporation may be a more fruitful way for researchers to advance the cause of urban cycling.     

Truck movement across the Canada–US border: The effects of 9/11 and other factors

The objective of this study is to isolate the effects of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent stringent border security regime on the levels of truck movement across the Canada–US border. A time series analysis, within an econometric system that rendered stationarity and used the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimator, was performed to model these movements. The analysis represents a natural experiment on the variability of cross-border truck movements in the aftermath of 9/11. Annual truck crossing data over the period 1972–2011, disaggregated by the country of registration (US and Canada) and Canadian jurisdictions (provinces) were used in the analysis. The results indicate that in general, 9/11 have had a negative effect on the cross-border movement of Canadian and US trucks, but the impacts were more pronounced in the case of the US trucks. Other interesting results include an increase in the number of US trucks during the period that followed the last US financial crisis. The results also illustrate the importance of GDP in explaining the observed truck movements across the Canada–US border.     

Not minding the gap: Does ride-hailing serve transit deserts?

Transit has long connected people to opportunities but access to transit varies greatly across space. In some cases, unevenly distributed transit supply creates gaps in service that impede travelers' abilities to cross space and access jobs or other opportunities. With the advent of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, however, travelers now have a new potential to gain automobility without high car purchase costs and in the absence of reliable transit service. Research remains mixed on whether ride-hailing serves as a modal complement or substitute to transit or whether ride-hailing fills transit service needs gaps. This study measures transit supply in Chicago and compares it to ride-hailing origins and destinations to examine if ride-hailing fills existing transit service gaps. Findings reveal clustering of ride-hailing pickups and drop-offs across the City of Chicago, but that the number of ride-hailing pickups and drop-offs was most strongly associated with high neighborhood median household income rather than measures of transit supply. In bivariate analyses, transit service was not associated with ride-hailing trip ends. But after controlling for neighborhood socioeconomic status, transit dependency, population density, and employment density, we found fewer ride-hailing trips in neighborhoods where bus service dominated and significantly more ride-hailing trips where rail service was prevalent. Patterns were slightly different for overnight weekend ride-hailing pick-ups, where higher transit density predicted a greater number of trips in nearby tracts. Additional research and policy is needed to ensure that ride-hailing services provide travel options to those who need them the most and fill transit gaps in low-income communities when options to increase service are limited.     

Perceptions of premium service and superiority: Why do customers pay more for high-value-added domestic airline services in Japan?

This paper clarifies the factors influencing customers' perceptions of premium service and superiority for high-value-added domestic airline services in Japan, and explains how these perceptions impact customer loyalty.To gather data for the analysis of consumers' perceptions, a questionnaire survey of 515 respondents who use high-value-added domestic airline services was conducted. These respondents' data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.The most valuable finding is the distinction between the perceptions of premium service and superiority, both of which strongly influence customer loyalty. This finding has two important implications. First, staff correspondence has a strong influence on customer loyalty – not directly, but through customers' perceptions of premium service and superiority. Second, perceptions of premium service and superiority influence customer loyalty separately. This finding may assist in the development of innovative high-value-added services.