The influence of gender on daily car use and on willingness to reduce car use in Sweden

This paper tests the influence of gender on daily car use and on willingness to reduce car use. Car use is modeled in terms of practical factors combined with manifestations of the specific influence of gender. Willingness to reduce car use is modeled in terms of attitudinal factors using a theory of environmentalism. The results confirm the existence of a gender component. The concluding discussion suggests that more research is needed to further our theoretical understanding and methodological expertise regarding how gender can be modeled in travel research in order to attain current policy regarding a gender equal transportation system.     

Business aviation in Germany: An empirical and model-based analysis

The primary role of large airports is to serve the general public with scheduled and charter air transport services, with a secondary role of providing direct air transport access to regional industry and to firms who operate their own fleets of aircraft. Because of the complexity of slot allocation procedures and increasing runway capacity problems at airports, there is a growing problem in realising this secondary function. Neighbouring regional airports could play a complementary role and cope with some of this growth in traffic. Here we quantify the distribution of growing business aviation demand between airports to explore potential ways of accommodating it at both major and nearby secondary facilities.     

Socioeconomic differences in public acceptability and car use adaptation towards urban road pricing

Urban road pricing is regarded as an effective instrument to reduce traffic congestion and environmental-related problems in metropolitan areas. Whereas the overall impact of urban road pricing on car use adaptation and public acceptability is known, there are only inconsistent results concerning the socioeconomic differences in the response towards road pricing. However, this knowledge is necessary for the development of urban road pricing packages. This paper uses a segmentation approach to identify groups of car users with a similar background in relevant socioeconomic variables and compares their responses towards road pricing. Three groups are identified: young families, suburban families, and singles and couples. These groups indeed differ in their car use adaptation towards urban road pricing as well as in their preferred revenues use. While all three groups significantly reduced their private car use, the young families reduced their car use most, followed by the group of singles and couples. Complementary measures are discussed that are believed to facilitate car use adaptation of each group in response towards urban road pricing.     

Impact of transport pricing on quality of life, acceptability, and intentions to reduce car use: An exploratory study in five European countries

This paper examines how a transport pricing policy aimed to reduce car use may affect individuals’ Quality of Life (QoL), to what extent this policy is acceptable to the public and if people intend to change car use when the policy is implemented. Also, comparisons were made amongst five countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, The Netherlands and Sweden). An internet survey among 490 respondents showed that a stringent measure, i.e., doubling costs of car use, hardly affects people’s general QoL. Respondents are unsure whether they would accept the policy and whether they intend to change their car use if the policy is implemented. Respondents from The Netherlands and Sweden are more pessimistic about the QoL consequences of the policy, think the policy is less acceptable and are less inclined to reduce car use than respondents from the Czech Republic, Italy and, to a lesser degree, Austria. Implications and recommendations for developing, adjusting or supplementing QoL measurement instruments and policies are discussed to ensure effective and efficient policy making.     

The impact of metropolitan,county, and local land use on driving emissions in US metropolitan areas: Mediator effects of vehicle travel characteristics

Many municipalities in the U.S. pursue compact development to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from driving. Despite the efforts, however, recent studies suggest that some land use strategies such as densification and mixed-use development may result in slower vehicle movements, and consequently generate more driving emissions. Since vehicle miles of travel (VMT) is only a proxy and not an exact measure of emissions, reduction in VMT may not lead to a proportional reduction in transportation GHG emissions. Aside from local land use efforts, regional factors also influence vehicle travel and associated emissions.This study investigates the relationship between land use, vehicle travel, and driving emissions in the selected U.S. metropolitan areas at multiple geographic levels. The study employed structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques to examine how land use influences vehicle travel characteristics and associated emissions. The main data sources for the analyses include the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) add-on samples and the Smart Location Database (SLD) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The study results show that VMT reduction and the associated environmental benefit do not show a one-on-one relationship due to the emissions penalty of lowered vehicle operating speed. Vehicle travel and associated emissions are not only influenced by local urban form factors but also affected by the greater geographical context.     

Integrating Muslim Customer Perceived Value,Satisfaction, Loyalty and Retention in the Tourism Industry: An empirical study

In recent years, customer value has been the favorable theme for numerous tourism studies and reports. However, although Muslims make up one of the largest tourist markets in the world, perceived value of tourism offering oriented toward this market has not been clearly defined. Furthermore, there is a lack of systematic empirical evidence regarding the effects of Muslim Customer Perceived Value (MCPV) on consumer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer retention. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify the MCPV dimensions, to examine the interrelationships between MCPV, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and Muslim customer retention, and to develop and test a conceptual model of the consequences of MCPV in the tourism industry. Moreover, 13 hypotheses were developed and tested using a sample of 221 Muslim tourists. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to test the validity of the measures, while the structural equation modeling has been used in hypotheses testing. The strength of the relationship between the constructs indicates that features of the suggested MCPV model are crucial to achieving Muslim customer retention in the tourism industry. Findings also suggest that the availability of the suggested Islamic attributes value, along with conventional value dimensions, could satisfy Muslim tourists when they buy a tourism package. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An exploratory empirical analysis of willingness to hire and pay for flying taxis and shared flying car services

A new transportation mode that can simultaneously operate on land and in the air, namely the flying cars, is anticipated to penetrate the automobile fleet between 2020 and 2025. Due to their flexible mobility patterns and automated operational characteristics, flying taxi and shared flying car services are expected to expand the existing shared mobility services (such as Uber, Lyft, and similar services) of the urban transportation network. Despite their forthcoming introduction in the shared mobility market, public perceptions and expectations about these services have not been investigated in travel demand literature. This study aims to provide an exploratory analysis of public willingness to hire and pay for flying taxis and shared flying car services, and to identify the determinants of the willingness to hire and pay for such services. Using data collected from an online survey, individuals' willingness to hire and to pay for flying taxi and shared flying car services are statistically modeled within a correlated grouped random parameters bivariate probit framework. The analysis shows that various socio-demographic characteristics and individuals’ opinions towards the perceived benefits and challenges of flying cars affect public willingness to hire and pay for flying taxi and shared flying car services. Even though the awareness about the operation of flying taxis and shared flying car services is possibly limited in the public sphere, the findings of this study can provide insights into the challenges that policymakers, manufacturing companies, and shared mobility providers will face with the introduction of such flying car services in the transportation networks.     

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.     

An empirical analysis of dockless bike-sharing utilization and its explanatory factors: Case study from Shanghai,China

Revealing dockless bike-sharing utilization pattern and its explanatory factors are essential for urban planners and operators to improve the utilization and turnover of public bikes. This study explores the dockless bike-sharing utilization pattern from the perspective of bike using GPS-based bike origin-destination data collected in Shanghai, China. In this paper, utilization patterns are captured by decoupling several spatially cohesive regions with intensive bike use via non-negative matrix factorization. We then measure the utilization efficiency of bikes within each sub-region by calculating Time to booking (ToB) for each bike and explore how the built environment and social-demographic characteristics influence the bike-sharing utilization with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. The matrix factorization results indicate that the shared bikes mainly serve a certain area instead of the whole city. In addition, the GWR model shows higher explanatory power (Adjusted R² = 0.774) than the OLS regression model (Adjusted R² = 0.520), which suggests a close relationship between bike-sharing utilization and the selected explanatory variables. The coefficients of the GWR model reveal the spatial variations of the linkage between bike-sharing utilization and its explanatory factors across the study area. This study can shed light on understanding the demand and supply of shared bikes for rebalancing and provide support for operators to improve the dockless bike-sharing utilization efficiency.     

Structures of commitment in mode use: a comparison of Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain

Travellers commit themselves to particular behaviours through the ownership of cars and season tickets. They trade a large one-off payment for low or zero marginal cost at the point of use. It can be assumed that these commitments influence travel behaviour. To the knowledge of the authors there is no literature which addresses the choice between the commitment to the one or the other mode and its impacts on travel behaviour.The paper presents models using structural equation modelling to test a-priori hypotheses on the paths linking car-availability, season-ticket-ownership and modal usage. Modal usage is operationalised as the number of trips by car, public transport, or as the distances travelled by car or public transport. The models are based on three different surveys: Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain. The results confirm the dominance of car-availability, which drives the other variables, but the relationships are more complicated than generally assumed.     

Spatial and temporal analysis of bike-sharing use in Cologne taking into account a public transit disruption

This research analyzes the relationship between bike-sharing and public transit using bike-sharing data collected in Cologne, Germany. The selected system is one of very few in Germany that is organized as a free-floating system, which allows the generation of more detailed data. A construction site in the light rail network causing multiple disruptions in the public transit network offered the possibility to detect changes in bike-sharing usage that occur in the corresponding period. Applying negative binomial regression, spatial and temporal usage patterns are analyzed to identify connections to the public transit network and other factors influencing the usage of bike sharing. The analysis suggests the existence of a spatial relationship between bike-sharing and public transit. Therefore, an intermodal use of both means of transport can be assumed. The short-term changes in the public transit network caused by the construction site only have minor impacts on the usage patterns. Other factors that affect the usage structures could be identified. Proximity to universities as well as the number of certain points of interest nearby, such as food outlets and shops, promote bike-sharing use. Higher temperatures are also positively correlated, while rain reduces usage. The findings of the study can be beneficial to integrate bike-sharing into urban transport systems, especially regarding public transit.     

Changes in land use typology of global airports: An empirical investigation with implications for the aerotropolis concept

Aerotropolis is an urban development concept characterised by the concentration of land uses fostering economic activities around airports. However, limited empirical evidence exists about the formation of aerotropolises and their effects on the productivity of airports. This study addresses the gaps by examining changes in land use patterns around 75 major airports globally, using data extracted from Google Earth for two time periods: 2004 and 2014. A Two-Step cluster analysis technique was applied to identify natural groupings of the airports in terms of their land use patterns for both periods. Changes in cluster membership were observed between the periods to examine the process of aerotropolis formation. A multivariate multiple linear regression (MMLR) model is estimated to identify factors contributing to aerotropolis formation process. Finally, the effects of the aerotropolis formation process on airport productivity is estimated in a two-stage least square (2SLS) regression model. Cluster analysis results show that airport land side development can be classified into three groups: Island airports (surrounded by largely vacant land), Waterfront airports (adjacent to a large body of water), and Built form airports (well-developed residential, commercial and industrial land uses). Overall, built-up areas increased by 2.1% between 2004 and 2014, and only three airports transitioned from Island to Built form – suggesting a weak evidence of the aerotropolis formation process. Developable land surrounding the airports and city population growth rate contributed significantly to this process, which consequently contributed to the productivity of airports. In conclusion, aerotropolises are a promising concept, yet unreal. It needs to be integrated with city plans to direct development, and thereby, to make it a reality.     

The factors influencing entry level airline pilot retention: An empirical study of Ryanair

Pilot retention has been a significant concern for airlines that find it difficult to recruit and maintain pilots who are classified as high skilled employees. The aim of this research is to determine the factors that influence pilot retention and investigate if these factors differ based on gender, age and level of commercial flying experience of pilots. A mixed methods approach was used. Quantitative information was collected via an online survey sent to 394 Ryanair pilots. Nine in-depth expert interviews were conducted. The pilots ranked, in order of importance, a number of retention-influencing factors spanning seven areas, identified with the help of interviewees and secondary research. The results of the survey indicate that the most important retention influencing factors are being based at home, working a fixed roster pattern for a financially stable airline, being paid a competitive salary and having job security. This research provides qualitative evidence that airlines can use to develop or update their financial and non-financial benefits packages and where necessary, amend work practices and maximise pilot motivation to stay.     

Entering the regime of automobility: car ownership and use by novice drivers in Iceland

This article investigates how young individuals access the regime of automobility. Instead of looking at the systemic nature of automobility, the article concentrates on its human component. Access to cars by young people in the greater Reykjavík area, and the shift in modal choice that occurs when they start driving, was investigated with a survey among high school students that yielded 553 answers. The results show that young residents in the capital area are fully aware of the costs of car-based automobility. Their near-universal move to cars when they enter driving age reflects the conditions of this regime. Yet they are also ambivalent about their position within the regime. While most previous studies of novice drivers have centred on road safety issues, this study shows the need to consider the cultural and social aspects of young people driving. This can lead to a deeper understanding of the modal shift that perpetuates car-based automobility, which is an important issue for transport planning.     

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.     

Understanding bus rapid transit route ridership drivers: An empirical study of Australian BRT systems

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems are an increasingly popular public transport option internationally. They provide rail-like quality for bus services for a fraction of the cost of fixed rail. Many claims of high and increasing ridership have resulted from BRT system development; however, it is unclear exactly which aspects of BRT system design drive this. This paper explores whether BRT design features, among other influences, significantly increase ridership above and beyond the impact of service levels. It does so using a series of regression models undertaken on 77 BRT and non-BRT bus routes in Australia which is known for its diversity in BRT route design. Explanatory variables used included service level, frequency, speed, stop spacing, share of segregated right of way, vehicle accessibility, employment and residential density, car ownership levels and BRT infrastructure quality. Five models explored the role of these variables. Two models found that service level dominates predictions of boardings per route km although they suffer from endogeneity. Further models control for this influence by modelling boardings per vehicle km. Overall results suggest that some BRT infrastructure treatments such as right of way have a significant impact on ridership but the influence of infrastructure is within the context of high service levels. The role of accessible vehicles has also been highlighted in this research, although more research is needed to clarify this influence. The paper concludes with a discussion of the various influences on ridership and recommendations for existing policy and future research.     

A conceptual evaluation framework for organisational safety culture: An empirical study of Taipei Songshan Airport

This study included three phases. The first phase was to establish an evaluation hierarchy framework for organisational safety culture in accordance with the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and including expert perspectives. The second phase involved evaluating weight and rankings in order of importance using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. In the third phase, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Scheffe multiple comparison test were used to compare the different evaluation constructs and criteria of the airport's various internal safety management units. The study results demonstrated that Taipei Songshan Airport's general management units believed that ‘Safety Supervision’, ‘Safety-oriented Working Environment’ and ‘System of Incentives and Penalties’ should be considered implementation priorities to improve overall performance in the airport organisational safety culture. In addition, the ANOVA results revealed significant differences among the airport's management units with respect not only to the personal dimension, including ‘Safety Values’, ‘Safety Evaluation Standards’ and ‘Safety Management Updates’, but also to the situational dimension, such as ‘Safety Communication and Commitment’ and ‘Injury Rate’.     

Market segmentation based on time use: an empirical analysis in the historic city of Toledo,Spain

There are two major scarce resources for visitors: time and money. However, literature on tourism has paid less attention to the former than to the latter. The objective of this paper is, therefore, to evaluate the effectiveness and profitability of time use in a destination as a segmentation criterion in tourism. The empirical analysis took place in the historic city of Toledo (Spain), and was based on information obtained from 799 day-trippers and tourists. The results obtained reveal the existence of four segments as regards day-trippers and another four as regards tourists. What is more, there are significant differences in the spending and future intentions of the clusters of day-trippers and tourists. All of these findings have led us to conclude that the segmentation criterion proposed will be of great use when determining which groups of visitors the destination most/least needs to attract. The empirical evidence obtained also provides practical orientation as to how to improve activity and service offers.     

Accounting for differences in modelled estimates of RP,SP and RP/SP direct petrol price elasticities for car mode choice: A warning

Using a sample of 245 direct petrol price elasticities of car travel collected from 52 published mode choice studies, a random coefficient regression model is estimated to account for heterogeneity in the influence of the type of data used in the various studies (RP, SP and a combination of RP/SP). The focus on the type of data is designed to highlight a concern that has emerged in the way that an increasing number of researchers and consultants derive elasticities from stand-alone stated preference studies, and apply them. It is well known that this is not valid without model calibration (usually via the mode-specific constants), since the elasticity formula uses the probability of an alternative being chosen. To understand the extent of possible behavioural response bias when calibration is ignored is important, signalling a possible adjustment process to correct for the absence of calibration relative to calibrated RP and or RP/SP derived elasticities.