Timo Ohnmacht

Social-Activity Travel: Do the ‘Strong-Tie Relationships’ of a Person Exist in the Same Community? The Case of Switzerland

In the relatively new field of social-activity travel behavior research, it has often been stated that social relationships have become increasingly physically dispersed in various contemporary societies. If so, this dynamic has enormous consequences on both travel behavior and social support. More explicitly, people have to travel some distance in order to meet, they need to plan their social activities further ahead of time, and, sociologically speaking, they are at risk of weakening their relationships to friends, immediate family, relatives, etc due to spatial distance. In this paper a binominal logit model was used to examine the characteristics of Swiss citizens who had named nonlocal strong-tie relationships in a nationwide representative survey. The empirical findings show various characteristics that increase the likelihood of having strong-tie relationships outside ones community, such as one-person households, higher education, younger cohorts, long-distance commuting, and, interestingly, people who want to spend more time with friends. I elaborate a discussion of these findings as they concern recent debates in the field of social-activity travel behavior.

The influence of trust perceptions on German tourists’ intention to book a sustainable hotel: a new approach to analysing marketing information

ABSTRACT This study examined the relationship between German tourists’ trust perceptions and their intention to book a sustainable hotel, pioneering a new quantitative approach to sustainable tourism marketing. Data came from 300 respondents who participated in an online survey. Respondents were given a digital brochure to read containing information about a “fictitious” three-star beach hotel in Portugal, before completing a questionnaire that measured inter alia their intention to book this sustainable hotel. Both individual “general trust” (perception of others’ trustworthiness) and “specific trust” towards the fictitious hotel in the brochure were measured. The survey also evaluated respondents’ perceptions about the usefulness of the information in the brochure. Multiple regression analysis of the data indicated that general trust, trusting the hotel and perceived usefulness of the brochure were positively and significantly related to booking intentions. An interaction between general trust and perceived usefulness was also observed. This means that the higher the perception rate about the brochures usefulness, the higher general trust was for booking intentions and vice versa. The practical implications of the results suggest that tourists could be motivated to book a hotel if its sustainability attributes and amenities were communicated in a trust inspiring way in marketing material.

Transportation Modeling as a Didactic Tool

Background. Interconnections of settlement, transportation, and society are extremely varied, complex, and context-specific. The Simulation Game HUMAN SETTLEMENT AND TRANSPORT (HST) aims to assist in the training and continuing education of transportation students and professionals with the transportation modeling software VISUM. Aim. The key research questions are as follows: Can transportation models be used as didactic tools to improve the teaching on causal chains between land use and transport? Why and how does transport modeling enhance students learning in transportation planning and settlement structure? What are the self-reported learning outcomes and how do they vary from conventional didactic settings such as chalk-and-talk teaching, case studies, closed exercises, and desk research? Method. A case study is used to evaluate the game’s ability to simulate the complexity of actual human settlement and transportation. We focus on self-reported learning and how the expert game encourages students to discover knowledge. Results. This expert game successfully replicated complex and context-specific scenarios that actual urban planning committees might face. Participants revealed that they unearthed interrelations between settlement, transportation, and society similar to those found in the relevant academic literature. Conclusions. The results affirm the game’s effectiveness as an educational tool for transportation engineering, urban planning, and transportation modeling students and professionals. Recommendation. This research suggests that properly incorporating policy games into the curriculum can enhance students’ learning in transportation planning and settlement structure.

More Comfort, Shorter Travel Time, or Low Fares?

This paper, by controlling for other covariants, examines how the needs and preferences of transit users for more comfort, shorter travel times, or low fares vary across different trip purposes, such as education, work, holiday, leisure, business, and shopping. The fieldwork for this research effort was undertaken in central Switzerland on a scenic railway route. The logit modeling approach shows the following preliminary findings: Shorter travel times are most preferred by business travelers, followed by those traveling for educational and work purposes. Leisure and holiday travelers are more sensitive to low fares than to comfort. There is a strong age effect; for leisure travel elderly people tend to prefer comfort more than a low fare. Transport decision makers could balance system needs with customer expectations and incorporate these factors into transport and marketing planning.

Route-Recording Technology for the Swiss Microcensus on Mobility and Transport 2010: An Innovative Alternative to Distance Estimations by Respondents

Route recording is a key new feature of the Swiss Microcensus on Mobility and Transport 2010 (MCMT 2010). Whereas in previous micro-censuses information on distances was based on respondents’ estimates, the MCMT 2010 for the first time supplemented these estimates with effective distances determined by means of routing. Given the far greater accuracy of routed distance data compared with subjective estimates, the routed distances were applied for all motorized distance-related analyses. It was found that route recording provided reliable and valid distance measures and was one way to overcome the difficulty with participants’ distance estimates. But development work is needed on the routing of non-motorized travel regarding both digital networks and the survey method. The paper concludes by drawing on the findings of this examination and formulating opportunities for improvement and enhancement.

Geografien des Sozialen und Mobilität

Der Artikel untersucht die Grosse von ego-zentrierten Netzwerken in Abhangigkeit von mobilitatsbiografischen Ereignissen und Soziodemografie. Anhand eines zusammengespielten Datensatzes aus drei verwandten Forschungsprojekten wird die raumliche Disparitat von Netzwerkgeografien gemessen. Die fur die Geografien des Sozialen ermittelte Masszahl fliesst als abhangige Variable in multivariate Verfahren mit ein und reprasentiert den „sozialen“ Aktionsraum eines Akteurs. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob Mobilitatsanforderungen und Mobilitatschancen in der fortgeschrittenen Moderne - wie raumliche Flexibilitat fur Ausbildung, Beruf und Verwirklichung von Interessen - zu einer raumlich extensivierten Lebenswelt fuhren. Es kann empirisch nachgewiesen werden, dass mannliche, junge, gut ausgebildete Akteure, die haufig ihren Lebensmittelpunkt wechseln, mit einer raumlich dispersen Netzwerkgeografie konfrontiert sind. This paper addresses the size and the structure of egocentric social networks focusing on how the geography of social networks depends on events in the mobility biography and on sociodemographic factors. The results of three related research projects were pooled and a figure of network geography was calculated for each case in the dataset. The network geography figure for each dataset represents the “social activity space” of an actor and is the dependent variable in multivariate data analysis. Therefore, the question to be asked is whether the fulfilling of mobility chances and requirements during the course of life induces geographically far-flung networks. The evidence shows that young and highly educated male actors with frequent relocations are confronted with a dispersed network geography. Cet article presente une recherche sur la taille des reseaux sociaux egocentriques en fonction des evenements biographiques et des facteurs socio-demographiques. Les resultats de trois projects d’investigation ont ete mis ensembles et un indice pour la taille des reseaux sociaux a ete calcule pour chaque personne dans la base de donnees. Cet indice represente l’espace social d’un acteur et entre comme variable dependante aux analyses multivariables. C’est un but du projet d’analyser la relation entre les exigences et les opportunites de mobilite d’aujourd’hui – comme la flexibilite spaciale pour le travail, l’education et les interets personels –et la dispersion spaciale des activites des acteurs. Les resultats empiriques montrent que des acteurs masculins, jeunes et bien formes avec un changement frequent du centre de leurs vies sont confrontes � une geographie de resaux sociaux dispersee.