Intensive travel time: an obligation or a choice?

Iragaël Joly and Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin ()
Additional contact information
Stéphanie Vincent-Geslin: LET - Laboratoire d'économie des transports - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENTPE - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LaSUr - Laboratoire de sociologie urbaine - EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper explores what prompts some individuals to spend a significant amount of time travelling. In the literature, travel time tends to be regarded as useless, unproductive time and, in some cases, as the worst time of the day. The actual behaviour of intensive travellers challenges this view of travel time. A mixed approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies was adopted. A survival analysis of daily travel time in eight European cities gives a quantitative definition of intensive travellers. Qualitative interviews with intensive travellers explore the various dimensions of choice and/or obligation that are responsible for these extreme daily travel times. The results show that roughly 20 % of the individuals in the sample for each city have long travel times (more than 100 min a day). The quantitative analysis also suggests that the behaviour of these individuals is atypical and cannot be explained solely by the characteristics that are considered in standard travel surveys. A qualitative sociological approach supplements the quantitative approach and illustrates that the allocation of travel time is not only determined by the activity pursued at the destination or the mode of transport but also by other factors such as personal beliefs and the perception of travel time. The positive perception of travel time as time to be used constructively or enjoyed influences the decision to travel intensively and, above all, contributes to its long-term acceptability. A number of political issues depend on travel behaviour and therefore, to some extent, on time management. New patterns of behaviour with regard to time management help explain the expansion in the range of individual travel.

Keywords: travel time; mixed approach; use of travel time; survival model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-03-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01309467v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in European Transport Research Review, 2016, 8 (1), pp.1-14. ⟨10.1007/s12544-016-0195-7⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01309467v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01309467

DOI: 10.1007/s12544-016-0195-7

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().