How real is a reported desire to travel for its own sake? Exploring the ‘teleportation’ concept in travel behaviour research

Marie Russell () and Patricia Mokhtarian

Transportation, 2015, vol. 42, issue 2, 333-345

Abstract: The ‘teleportation test’ has been used in travel behaviour research for more than a decade, as a means of assessing whether an individual views travel purely as a disutility. The teleportation concept has been used successfully in qualitative research to elicit responses and clarify attitudes to travel time. However, survey-based studies have revealed an apparent inconsistency, in that many people who report an ideal travel time greater than zero, and/or do not consider their travel time as wasted, also report wanting to teleport. This note reviews a range of studies involving the teleportation concept, highlights the inconsistency, suggests reasons for it, and proposes a research approach for testing the validity of those reasons. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Positive utility of travel; Travel multitasking; Commuting; Travel time; Ideal travel time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11116-014-9546-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:transp:v:42:y:2015:i:2:p:333-345

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11116/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11116-014-9546-1

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation is currently edited by Kay W. Axhausen

More articles in Transportation from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().