Long-Distance Travel as an Extension of Everyday Life: Understanding Distinct Traveler Types

With the growing relevance of long-distance travel and the resulting climate impacts, the understanding of long-distance travel next to everyday travel becomes relevant. In particular in urban areas, people often compensate short distances and the use of environmentally friendly means of transport in everyday life with a higher amount of long-distance travel. The question arises how to characterize the behavior of urban people considering both everyday and long-distance travel behavior. Of interest is, whether there are discrepancies or similarities between the both kinds of travel, especially regarding mode choice. The demand for a car may not only result from daily mobility needs but from the extension of everyday life with long-distance travel. With the authors' paper, the authors present a typology of distinct travel types, that considers characteristics of everyday travel and long-distance travel as well as attitudes. By using data from a survey in Munich (Germany), the authors analyzed the relevance of long-distance journeys with short durations, such as weekend trips, as an extension of everyday life. For the segmentation, characteristics of everyday travel, long-distance travel and attitudes towards the car and public transit were simultaneously included in a cluster analysis. ... mehrSeven traveler types were identified and compared to each other. The results show that traveler types exist that are very similar in everyday travel behavior but show completely different characteristics in terms of long-distance travel volumes and mode choice. Furthermore, the authors also see that for some traveler types, the car exclusively plays a role for trips that extend everyday life.