On 3rd and 4th July a seminar on “Socio-Ecological Perspectives on Mobility” will be held at TU Dortmund University. The event is a collaboration between our research project and the research project “Travel behavior in Polish cities: causality, behavioral changes, and climate impacts“, led by Michał Czepkiewicz (Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Poland) and funded by National Science Centre in Poland (2020/37/B/HS4/03931).

The programme of the two-day seminar can be downloaded here. A description of the background to the seminar can be downloaded here. Parts of the seminar will be broadcasted online. If you are interested in attending the webinar online please email the organizers (giulio.mattioli@tu-dortmund.de).

The final paper from the first phase of the project was published last week in the journal Energy Research & Social Science. The study uses a data from a large representative survey to identify the characteristics of people with high GHG emissions from transport, with a particular focus on those with high emissions from air travel but low emissions from car travel (or vice-versa). We find that there is considerable diversity within the group of high emitters, and that certain factors (such as environmental attitudes) matter less than commonly assumed, while others (e.g., social network dispersion, long-distance commuting) matter more.

The article can be downloaded at this address.

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.

This week two empirical studies from our research project were published in the journals Travel Behaviour & Society and Journal of Transport Geography.

The first study looked at the impact of migration background, ethnicity, and social network dispersion on air and car travel. It finds that (first-generation) migrants tend to fly more (mostly because of dispersed social networks) but to drive cars less. The paper is part of a virtual special issue on long-distance travel that we are guest-editing as part of the project.

The second article used unique data from Dortmund to show how patterns of socialisation to holiday travel behaviour have changed across generations since the early 20th century, and what the impacts of early socialisation to foreign travel are. We find that younger people today are more likely to have had earlier and more extensive experience of holidays abroad, and that that might lead them to make more foreign trips as adults.

A full list of project-related publications is available here.

The journal Travel Behaviour & Society has set up a webpage for the Virtual Special Issue “Long-distance travel: between social inequality and environmental constraints”.

The Special Issue was guest edited by LDS project members Giulio Mattioli and Joachim Scheiner, along with Frédéric Dobruszkes and Zia Wadud.

8 papers are included so far, while more are still in the review phase. Find the complete list here.

A new paper has just been published in Travel Behaviour & Society on trends in air travel inequality. It is a collaboration between our research project and Milena Büchs, Associate 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 combines household expenditure and national travel survey data to investigate whether and to what extent patterns of participation in air travel have changed in the UK over the last 20 years. We find that air travel remains very unequally distributed, even in a country like the UK, although it’s become slightly less so over the last 20 years. The findings have implications for the distributional impact of travel demand management measures such as aviation taxes and the ‘frequent flyer levy’.

To access the paper click on the image below (or email the authors).

A new paper from the LDS project has just been published in the journal Urban Planning, as part of a special issue on “Cities, Long-Distance Travel, and Climate Impacts“. The study looks at the reasons why the residents of large cities tend to travel more by air. It finds that that’s partly explained by there being more people with migration background and dispersed social networks in cities, as well as by better accessibility to large airports. The paper is available open access on the journal’s website (click on the image below).

Giulio Mattioli delivered a presentation of the interim findings of the LDS project as part of the virtual advisory board meeting of the ‘Living Well Within Limits‘ (LiLi) research project. You can watch the presentation below.