Do satisfying walking and cycling trips result in more future trips with active travel modes? An exploratory study

Previous studies have indicated that travel satisfaction - the experienced emotions during, and cognitive evaluation of, a trip - can be affected by travel mode choice and other trip characteristics. However, as satisfactory trips might improve a person's attitude towards the used mode, persons may be more likely to use that same mode for future trips of the same kind. Hence, a cyclical process between travel mode choice and travel satisfaction might occur. In this paper we begin to analyse this process—using a structural equation modelling approach on cross-sectional data—for people who engage in walking and cycling for leisure trips in the Belgian city of Ghent. The focus on walking and cycling reflects recent studies indicating that active travel is often associated with the highest levels of travel satisfaction. Results of this exploratory analysis offer tentative support for the idea of a cyclical process: the evaluation of walking and cycling trips positively affects the respondents' attitude towards the respective mode, which in turn has a positive effect on choosing that mode.     

Determinants of the Adoption for Travel Information on Smartphone

Many travelers are interested in the usage of smartphones for their trips. This study aims in investigating the determinants of their intentions to adopt information on smartphones for travel decision making. This paper suggests a combined model to examine travelers’ intentions to use travel information on their smartphones from two standpoints: hardware using the united theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and software using the e‐satisfaction (E‐SAT) model. The results show that four main determinants influence travelers' intentions to use travel information on smartphones for their trips: usefulness, ease of use, social influence, and satisfaction with travel websites. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Travel time use and its impact on high-speed-railway passengers' travel satisfaction in the e-society

The availability of wireless networks and the pervasive use of mobile ICT devices have allowed passengers to conduct various e-activities during journeys. These various e-activities, in turn, may change people's conventional perception of travel time from being “wasteful” and “unproductive,” to “desirable” and giving rise to satisfaction. Journeys on high-speed railway (HSR) is particularly relevant for transport researchers to probe into this question because of its characteristics of being medium to long-distance (typically taking half-an-hour or more), seat availability, and a smooth ride. Using a questionnaire survey on passengers along the Shanghai-Nanjing HSR route, this study aims to examine the nature of ICT device use and in-vehicle e-activities conducted by HSR passengers and the influence on their travel satisfaction with their on-board journey experience. Our results reveal a high percentage of ICT device use and a wide variety of e-activities such as e-working, e-communication, and e-reading for leisure on HSR trains. In addition, the higher use of ICT device was associated with an increase of passengers' travel satisfaction. Furthermore, we found a positive effect of work-related e-activities on travel satisfaction for business/work trips, while a positive effect of entertainment-related e-activities for non-business/work trips. Given that HSR is potentially a more sustainable transport mode, some possible policy implications are proposed to encourage people to use HSR, as opposed to driving or flying, for medium to long-distance intercity journeys.     

Exploring the interplay between the use of risk-related information,risk perception formation,and the stages of travel product consumption

This study examined using patterns of risk and warning-related information by backpackers who develop their own travel risk perceptions. It looked at the preferences of information sources and usage levels among Israeli backpackers. Using a simulating approach, interviewees were asked to report on their preference and usage patterns in four stages of the travel consumption sequence – (a) prior to choice of destination; (b) after choice of destination but before departure; (c) during the trip, and (d) after returning home. Based on a sample of 467 former backpackers, the study revealed that they use a relatively wide range of risk-related sources of information yet their preference and usage levels in those sources vary as they moved from one consumption stage to the other. The most innovative finding of this study is that unlike previous findings there was a significant and direct correlation between the level of risk-related information consumption and the backpackers’ level of risk perception in each of the tourist product consumption stages. Further research directions derived from these findings as well as management implications are provided.     

Estimating the impact of COVID-19 on air travel in the medium and long term using neural network and Monte Carlo simulation

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on the airline industry. Air travel in the United States declined in 2020 with significantly lower domestic and international flights. The dynamic change and uncertainty in the trend of COVID-19 have made it difficult to predict future air travel. This paper aims at developing and testing neural network models that predict domestic and international air travel in the medium and long term based on residents' daily trips by distance, economic condition, COVID-19 severity, and travel restrictions. Data in the United States from various sources were used to train and validate the neural network models, and Monte Carlo simulations were constructed to predict air travel under uncertainty of the pandemic and economic growth. The results show that weekly economic index (WEI) is the most important predictor for air travel. Additionally, daily trips by distance play a more important role in the prediction of domestic air travel than the international one, while travel restrictions seem to have an impact on both. Sensitivity analysis results for four different scenarios indicate that air travel in the future is more sensitive to the change in WEI than the changes in COVID-19 variables. Additionally, even in the best-case scenario, when the pandemic is over and the economy is back to normal, it still takes several years for air travel to return to normal, as before the pandemic. The findings have significant contributions to the literature in COVID-19's impact on air transportation and air travel prediction.     

Information searching and the travel behaviours of MICE travellers: a cross‐cultural study

Despite growing academic interest in meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) travel in recent years, there has been little investigation of the comparative information search behaviours of MICE travellers on the basis of their country of origin and cultural background. This paper proposes that country of residence and primary language spoken are significant factors in explaining the information searching and travel behaviours of MICE travellers. The sample population included Japanese‐, English‐ and Chinese‐speaking MICE travellers. A self‐completion questionnaire was administered to travellers undertaking MICE‐related travel in Taipei, Taiwan. Some significant differences were identified between the three respondent groups. The findings demonstrate the important role that is played by internal and external information sources among MICE travellers as a predictor of their subsequent travel to Taiwan. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Smartphones,travel time-use,and attitudes to public transport services. Insights from an explorative study of urban dwellers in two Norwegian cities

The uptake of mobile media with internet connection has increased rapidly in almost every part of the world, and this has significantly changed how public transport passengers use their travel time. Studies have documented that use of mobile information and communication technologies (ICT) while traveling has the potential to enrich use of travel time and in some cases, strengthen positive attitudes towards public transport. The alternative hypothesis—that mobile communication technologies make travelers more critical and demanding, e.g., due to the risk of interference—has so far hardly been explored through empirical studies. Based on a web-based survey of travelers in two of the largest cities in Norway (Oslo and Trondheim), this paper investigates how use of smart devices are related to general attitudes toward public transportation services. A segmentation of travelers in three clusters based on their mobile use habits, shows that the most active group of mobile media users—a group of younger and middle-aged urban dwellers—were those who bore the most critical attitudes to the public transport services. In contrast, the groups that used their mobile phones rarely, or less actively, on their public transport trips were more satisfied. The findings suggests that a new generation of “equipped travelers” has developed expectations regarding their public transport journeys that service providers might have problems to fulfill in current times. Thus, there is a risk of the most active smartphone users developing negative attitudes to public transport if (or when) their experiences are not improved.     

Inter-city travel behaviour adaptation to extreme weather events

Increased attention has been paid to travel behaviour in circumstances of extreme weather conditions that are expected with climate change, and the analyses usually address intra-city travel. There is lack of assessments on inter-city travel which has less redundancy and is more exposed to extreme weather threats. In addition, much of the research has been carried out in developed countries. This paper provides new perspectives by investigating how people adapt their inter-city travel behaviour to flooding impacts in Bangladesh. With an orthogonal design of three flooding scenarios, questionnaire data were collected in 14 coastal and inland areas. Results of the statistical analyses identify the significant impacts of flooding on people’s inter-city travel and reveal significant differences in attitudes and responses to flooding and extreme weather in coastal compared to inland locations. The main factors significantly affecting travel behaviour choice are road disruption, isolation by flood water, and flood frequency. These factors are felt differently in coastal and inland locations. The most common responses are cancelling trips or changing destinations. It is recommended that when making flooding adaptation decisions, it is important to protect road infrastructure and guarantee accessible routes in coastal areas, while offering more flood adaptation education to the inland people.     

Potential cost savings of frequent flyer miles for business travel

The mileage redemption strategy is a procedure used by many business firms to reduce air travel costs, in which the frequent flyer miles of traveling employees accumulated during business trips are applied to their future business trips to obtain “free” air tickets. This paper presents a framework that investigates how the frequent flyer miles can be used in the most effective way to reduce air travel costs by those firms that are either using the mileage redemption strategy or considering the use of the strategy. The framework can be implemented quite easily by a spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel.     

Expanding the positive utility of travel through weeklong tracking: Within-person and multi-environment variability of ideal travel time

Travel has been found to have a positive utility—often measured as a desire for non-zero travel time. Although past studies have found that desired travel time varies by trip attributes, they often focused on a single trip purpose (e.g., commute) or single time point (e.g., peak period of one day) and rarely captured variation within individuals and across multiple travel environments. To address these limitations, we employed a smartphone-based travel behavior survey of 186 users making 4397 trips in the Washington, DC, and Blacksburg, VA metropolitan areas. For each user, multiple trips were recorded and the user was asked to repeatedly report on the ideal travel time for each trip. We found that desired travel time varied across different trip environmental characteristics and purposes. Ideal travel time was longer for active travel trips, leisure trips, weekend trips, and when the user conducted activities during trips (e.g., talking, using the phone, looking at the landscape) and traveled with companions. Our study suggests the need for more realistic estimation of the value of travel time savings and the need for quantifying the effect of multitasking during travel on people's willingness to reduce travel time. Practitioners should also consider providing better urban infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists to fulfill their trips, as their ideal travel times closely match actual travel times.     

Modelling information use,image, and perceived risk with intentions to travel to East Asia

This research empirically tested a tourism behaviour model explaining tourists' intentions to vacation for the first time in selected countries extending image research by Baloglu and McCleary [(1999). U.S. international pleasure travelers’ images of four Mediterranean destinations: A comparison of visitors and nonvisitors. Journal of Travel Research, 38(2), 144–152; A model of destination image formation. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(4), 868–897] and more recently Kaplanidou and Vogt [(2007). The interrelationship between sport event and destination image and sport tourists’ behaviors. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 12(3–4), 183–206]. Key factors that remain untested in modelling international travel propensity were identified as: information sources, cognitive and affective destination image, and perceived risk. On-site surveys were conducted in two US metropolitan areas with a purposive convenience sample. Data were analysed with structural equation modelling for three destination countries (China, Japan, and South Korea) so that positioning strategies were illustrated through empirical evidence. Modelling results supported previous research showing that stronger positive cognitive and affective destination images and lower perceived risks for vacationing in a destination positively influenced intentions to travel to the countries of interest. Of greater interest are findings on information usage influencing cognitively held images, particularly cultural experiences, but information use was found not to directly influence the affective component of image. Intent to travel to each of the three countries was heightened by different factors – for China it was affective image, for Japan cognitive image, and South Korea a reduction in perceived risks. Destination marketers can use this model to understand the use of information sources, in general or specific types, to influence cognitive images held and perceived risks associated with a foreign country, and to ultimately modify affective image and intent to visit a destination for the potential first-time visitors.     

Examining the spatial–temporal dynamics of bus passenger travel behaviour using smart card data and the flow-comap

Over the past two decades, smart card data have received increasing interest from transport researchers as a new source of data for travel behaviour investigation. Collected by smart card systems, smart card data surpass traditional travel survey data in providing more comprehensive spatial–temporal information about urban public transport-based (UPT) trips. However, the utility of smart card data has arguably yet to be exploited fully in terms of extracting and exploring the spatial–temporal dynamics of UPT passenger travel behaviour. To advance previous work in this area, this paper demonstrates a multi-step methodology in order to render more insightful spatial–temporal patterns of UPT passenger travel behaviour. Drawing on the Brisbane, Australia, bus network as the case study, a smart card dataset was first processed in combination with General Transit Specification Feed (GTFS) data to reconstruct travel trajectories of bus passengers at bus stop level of spatial granularity. By applying geographical information system-based (GIS) techniques, this dataset was used to create flow-comaps to visualise the aggregate flow patterns at a network level. The flow-comaps uncovered the major pathways of bus passengers and its variations over a one-day period. The differences within the flow-comaps were also quantified to produce weighted flow-comaps that highlighted the major temporal changes of passenger flow patterns along a number of stop-to-stop linkages of the bus network. The proposed methodology visually unveiled the spatial–temporal travel behaviour dynamics of UPT passengers and, in doing so, showed the potential to contribute to a new evidence base with the capacity to inform local public transport policy.     

Residential location and daily travel distances: the influence of trip purpose

This paper investigates the extent to which residential location influences daily distance travelled if travel purposes are differentiated. Statistical multilevel models are applied to Swedish National Travel Survey data from 2005–2006. Travel purposes are categorized by considering time–spatial constraints and hypothesized factors of personal freedom of choice. Results indicate that the influence of residential location on daily distance travelled is highly conditional on trip purpose in a nationwide Swedish context. Although statistically significant proportions of the variation in daily distance travelled to work, on service errands, and on weekdays were dependent on residential location, daily travel distances for leisure activities and on weekends varied greatly among people living in the same neighbourhood. From a policy perspective, these results suggest that measures intended to alter the built environment to reduce the volume of travel will be most efficient as regards work trips, while trips taken during free time are unlikely to be much affected. In addition, the multilevel models applied reveal several important interactions between the variation in travel distances across residential locations and individual characteristics of which researchers should be aware, especially when examining service trips.     

Keep the children walking: active school travel in Tirana,Albania

This paper examines how characteristics of the physical and socio-economic environment influence children’s school travel mode in Tirana, the capital of Albania. A survey of students aged 11 to 13, revealed that an overwhelming majority walk to school, while bicycling and bus use are minimal. Students who walk to school often do so as part of a larger group of schoolmates, attend schools that are located relatively near their house, are faced with relatively few major road crossings during their journey, and belong to families that are less likely to own a car. Children who are driven to school (only 13.5% of our sample) usually have higher-income families and live farther from the school. Although Tirana’s high residential density has some environmental drawbacks, we deem it positive in that its result is that most students live very close to their schools and in close proximity to classmates walking to school. The fine grain pattern of the urban public school network contributes to the short distances between schools and homes. We provide a number of recommendations for the promotion of walking in home-school trips, as well as for the future physical development of the city and the school network.     

Carer-employees’ travel behaviour: Assisted-transport in time and space

Assisted-transport demand is a daily caregiving task that affects carer-employee’s activity-travel behaviour; however, little is known about such behaviour and the types of constraints that impact carer-employee health. Combining the principles of Hägerstrand’s time geography and Mckie et al.’s caringscape terrain, this research develops a mixed-methods framework to classify the travel behaviour of carer-employees based on their travel experience and the space-time fixity of their weekly schedules. The mixed-methods framework consists of sentiment analysis and k-means clustering, both which are used to analyze 25 randomly selected participants within the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTAH). Participants were asked to reflect on their recorded one-week trips in a trip summary questionnaire. Sentiment analysis was used to thematically describe carer-employees’ travel behavior, whereas, k-means clustering generated travel behaviour profiles. “Time”, “pressure”, “parents”, “run”, and “long” were several thematic keywords describing the carer-employees’ travel behaviour. K-means clustering identified three relative types of carer-employees’ travel behaviours: 1) flexible, 2) between flexible and fixed, and; 3) fixed. These results provide critical information for the establishment of custom transport programs, such as maximum monthly telecommuting allotment; such programs are useful for employers to use in order to alleviate assisted-transport demand on their employees.     

Examining the impact of weather variability on non-commuters’ daily activity–travel patterns in different regions of Sweden

By jointly modelling the routine and leisure activity–travel engagements of non-commuters in different regions of Sweden, this paper explores the interactions between time allocation, travel demand and mode choice under different weather conditions. Combined weather and travel survey datasets that span a period of over 13 years were analysed. Simultaneous Tobit models were applied to explore the interactions among these activity–travel indicators, whilst municipalities’ unique conditions and heterogeneities between different time-points were taken into account. The model results reveal the trade-offs between routine and leisure activities in terms of activity duration, number of trips and travel time. Positive mutual endogeneity was found between slow-mode share in routine and leisure trips. The results also highlight the trade-offs between routine and leisure activities under abnormal weather conditions. Regional differences between weather effects are substantial due to differences in direct, indirect and total marginal effects. Between-municipality variability constitutes a considerable part of the variability in activity duration and travel time. Between-municipality variability in leisure activity duration and leisure travel time is larger in northern Sweden, while that of routine activity duration and routine travel time is larger in central Sweden, after weather and social demographics have been controlled.     

The path and time efficiency of residents' trips of different purposes with different travel modes: An empirical study in Guangzhou,China

Improving residents' travel efficiency and reducing carbon emissions from travel are the key issues for sustainable development of urban transportation. This study first employed a circuity index to measure the path efficiency of residents' trips based on 2015 survey data in Guangzhou and developed a generalized additive model (GAM) to investigate the relationship between the path efficiency and travel distance for different purposes of trip and different travel modes. On this basis, it further evaluated the time efficiency of different travel modes for each trip. The results showed that there is a complex and nonlinear relationship between the path efficiency and travel distance, which differs between different purposes of trips and different travel modes. In general, trips by non-motorized transport have a lower circuity index and higher path efficiency than those by cars or public transport. Moreover, non-motorized transport is the time-efficiency optimal mode for almost half of the trips, especially for daily shopping trips. However, people prefer to choose public transport on their trips even though public transport is not the time-efficiency optimal mode for these trips. Generally, only about half of the residents chose the time-efficiency optimal mode for their trips. Those who did not choose the time-efficiency optimal mode tended to choose the modes with higher carbon-intensity. The conclusions of this study indicate that for improving travel efficiency and reducing carbon emissions from transport, more efforts should be focused on the non-motorized travel environment and developing relevant policies to encourage more walking and cycling.     

Socio-occupational and geographical determinants of the frequency of long-distance business travel in France

Business travel, and long-distance business travel in particular, has received much less attention in research than home-to-work travel. This article explores some determinants of the frequency of long-distance business travel. It focuses on the influence of two parameters that have been little studied: the individual’s socio-occupational group and the workplace location. The data used were provided by the 2008 French National Transport and Travel Survey. Following a review of the literature, a Poisson regression is performed on the frequency of long-distance business trips. The most significant determinants are socio-occupational category, income, gender and the urban or rural nature and size in terms of the number of inhabitants of the area of location. In particular long-distance business trip frequency is lower in the Paris urban area than in all the categories of urban areas as well as rural areas because of the highly centralised organisation of economic activity and the transport network in France.     

Attitudes of ageing passengers to air travel since the coronavirus pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on the demand for air transport. One passenger segment that has received relatively little attention is ageing passengers (defined as aged 65+), in spite of the fact that this group has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and in recent years has been viewed as a potential growth market. Therefore, the aim of this brief paper is to analyse the attitudes of ageing passengers by assessing air travel plans in the next 12 months, examining the factors influencing future flying decisions, and investigating the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on perceived risks and experiences associated with flying. The findings show that over 60% of ageing passengers are planning to travel by air in the next 12 months, although the nature of their trips may change. Factors such as flexible ticket booking and quarantine rules do not appear to be key drivers affecting travel decisions and within the different stages of the air journey, getting to/from the airport is perceived as the safest stage. The findings suggest that there are various COVID-19 implications for airlines and airports serving this market segment, ranging from the use of self-service technology, the generation of commercial/ancillary revenues and the design of surface access policies.