A new paper has just been published in the Journal of Sustainable Transport on the distributional impact of air travel taxes. It is a collaboration between our research project and Milena Büchs, Professor at the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, who is working for the Transport theme of the UK Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions.

The paper uses survey data from the UK to investigate what the distributional impact of different air travel taxation models would be. We find that air travel taxes, and particularly ‘frequent flyer levies’ are distributionally progressive, unlike other kinds of carbon taxes. Relevant for our project though, we find that recent migrants and people with family abroad are more likely to be frequent flyers even when on low incomes. This might make them more vulnerable to air travel taxes.

The article is open access at this address.

With the publication of the Editorial, the Virtual Special Issue of Travel Behaviour & Society arising from our research project is now completed. It includes 11 articles (mostly from Europe) with interesting and novel perspectives on long-distance travel.

We are delighted to announce that the German Research Councils have funded the extension of our research project into a second phase, titled “Change in long-distance travel: uncovering travel activity trends, inequalities, and dynamics over the life course” (2022-2025).

We will continue to explore the links between long-distance mobility, social change and climate change, this time focusing more on trends over time and on inequalities, based on quantitative data from Germany and the UK.

For a longer description of the second phase of the project see here.