Jane Gould

SHOPPING WITHOUT TRAVEL OR TRAVEL WITHOUT SHOPPING? AN INVESTIGATION OF ELECTRONIC HOME SHOPPING

This study explores the growth of electronic home shopping in terms of likely transportation and communication interactions. Although opportunities exist to shop from home today, most consumers initiate travel trips to stores or markets. Widespread use of automobiles has facilitated the retailing configurations we know today but the development of new electronic networks could changes this. This study establishes a baseline to explore shopping activities using two-day travel activity data from a large U.S. metropolitan area. It is found that people who telework from home today spend more time engaged in shopping activities than other workers. Potentially, their saved work travel is converted into new trips. IN the future, saved shopping travel might be converted into other types of travel, and modeling results show that for busy working women there is a latent demand for maintenance-related activities. The study results suggest that electronic home shopping will bring into play complex interactions between communications and transportation.

Projecting use of electric vehicles from household vehicle trials

Electric vehicles (EVs), in the form of cars and light-duty trucks, are currently being test marketed by most of the major auto manufacturers. EVs might become widely available in the future marketplace because of a combination of clean-fuel legislation, environmental concern on the part of buyers, and potential operating cost advantages. This paper reports on an eight-month long trial of prototype EVs, with a particular interest in comparing data collected from trials with matched data collected from a panel survey. The objective was to better understand vehicle trials as a source of information for transportation planning and market research, beyond the usual consumer preference information gathered for vehicle design purposes.

Clean air forever? A longitudinal analysis of opinions about air pollution and electric vehicles

Many current initiatives to develop the electric vehicle depend upon public perception that electric vehicles (EVs) are good for the environment. This study investigates how people acquire information about the environment and EVs, and whether their opinions about environmental efficacy change over time and experience levels. These issues are explored across two data sets. The first data set is a panel survey of California households (n=1718) and environmental opinions are tracked over two waves of survey. A decline in the environmental ethos is associated with several factors, including interpersonal communications and exposure to more specialized media. A sample of households from the panel study were subsequently chosen, among others, to participate in a two-week long trial of EVs (n=69). Opinions about environmental efficacy are studied as users gain first hand knowledge of an EV. Opinions about the environmental efficacy of the EV show improvement, but trial users become less likely to cite the environmental benefit as a reason for choosing the technology, and they do not change their opinions about providing policy incentives.

Driven to Shop?: Role of Transportation in Future Home Shopping

This study explores some of the transportation implications emerging from electronic home shopping and on-line commerce. It suggests that travel activities and travel patterns are likely to change as electronic commerce develops and as existing stores and commercial activities adjust to future competition from on-line commerce. The study illustrates some of the complex and unanticipated interactions that are likely to take place between the growth of new communication systems and transportation. In today’s retail markets, most goods are shipped to stores and people physically travel to stores to purchase goods. This tradition is likely to change with the growth of electronic home shopping, since many goods will be purchased on-line and consumers will not need to travel to shop. However, many items will require delivery to the home, and this may spur the expansion of home-delivery services. Other goods purchased on-line will require no physical distribution, and a new class of products, such as music CDs and software, is already being “shipped” electronically over broadband networks. Another impact of future electronic home shopping is the likely growth of entirely new types of retail venues, since it becomes easier to establish markets that bring together buyers and sellers who do not travel to meet, and without the movement of physical goods either. The shipping of goods takes place only after the transaction. All of these new market forms, which bring together electronically buyers, sellers, and goods, raise new issues for the study of transportation and communication interactions.

New interactive media: experts’ perceptions of opportunities and threats for existing businesses

The research reported here takes a complementary approach to the direct user/consumer studies, by measuring experts’ perceptions of the likely impact of new interactive media (NIM) on different product markets. This has two benefits. First, it provides a different (and, arguably, better‐informed) perspective on consumers’ likely future response to NIM from the perspective obtained by direct consumer research. Second, the perceptions of these and other experts will strongly influence firms’ investment in NIM and their applications, which will in turn strongly influence the impact on consumers.

Social Experiment to Encourage Drive-Alone Commuters to Try Transit

This study reports on a social experiment conducted in summer 2008 to convert solo drivers to transit. During a 3-month period, which was a time of rising gas prices, drivers were offered a no-cost bus pass if they turned in their commuter parking permits. At the end of 3 months, participants could either regain their parking permits or purchase regular bus passes, which were subsidized at 50%. Of the 381 enrolled in the experiment, 70% continued to use transit (or alternative transportation) after the trial. Only 114 (30%) returned to parking, even as gasoline prices started to moderate. The experiment built on the experience of social marketing programs and other campaigns that have explicitly tried to change habitual driving habits. Typically, these studies track changes in participants’ attitudes and behaviors. Researchers measured the attitudes and behaviors of participants, as well as changes in those who sought information but did not sign up and those who did sign up but later retreated to solo driving. Heuristically, these groups were labeled seekers, keepers, and retreaters. The three groups were compared and contrasted to identify factors that facilitate or reduce the likelihood of choosing to commute by public transit. Further applications of the social experiment are warranted because it effectively recruited new transit riders and it also provided insights about the process of changing travel modes.