Holiday Travel Behaviour and Correlated CO 2 Emissions—Modelling Trend and Future Scenarios for Austrian Tourists

Marie Lisa Kapeller, Manfred Füllsack and Georg Jäger
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Marie Lisa Kapeller: Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria
Manfred Füllsack: Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria
Georg Jäger: Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 22, 1-25

Abstract: The footprint of tourism through travel is contributing significantly to the accumulation of human-made CO 2 . Due to different options in transportation, resulting emissions depend strongly on the choices of individuals on how to travel. In Austria, land travel is the main mode of transportation, though air travel has shown a significant increase during the last decades. We present a model to estimate past and future emission trends of land and air travel for domestic (inbound) and international (outbound) travel destinations. For this, we use a combination of two software models, a social-economic individual-based model to simulate the decision processes of holiday travel and an emission calculation model to estimate single travel-based CO 2 emissions. Our model is supported by data (reference year 2016) on tourism demand, holiday destinations, household wealth and emissions of different transportation modes. Our model evaluation successfully reproduced historical data of travel demand in the period 2003–2019 and explores several future trends of (a) business-as-usual, (b) green transition and (c) aviation preference increase. We calculated a current CO 2 footprint of 5.8 million tonnes in 2019, which could increase to 7.3 million tonnes by 2030 if the current trend continues. A necessary decrease of transportation emissions is only possible when reducing air travel. In case of a green transition towards more land travel, total emissions could be kept constant compared to current emission levels. However, an overall reduction of holiday travel related CO 2 below 3.5 million tonnes has not been observed even under the best circumstances due to projected increases in the total population and increases in wealth.

Keywords: tourism; Austria; travel; emissions; agent-based model; greenhouse gases; transportation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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