How to motivate the population to reduce air travel?

During her Bachelor’s degree in tourism at the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland, Sarah Sandoz has been interested in finding ways to motivate the Swiss French population to reduce their plane trips, with the purpose of decreasing the environmental impact of tourism. First, she reviewed the literature available on the subject and then conducted semi-directed interviews with Swiss individuals who take the plane regularly and with others who have made the decision to stop taking the plane. The interviews were synthesised following six themes: climate impacts, comfort and services, destination offers, price, speed, and other advantages and disadvantages of each type of transport. From the literature review and the interviews synthesis, she then discussed some topics : climate impacts awareness, discrepancies in levels of comfort and services, lack of train destination offers, flying being the cheapest transportation mode and the value of speed.

Context

Nowadays, one cannot dismiss the fact that the planet is in an alarming environmental state. Indeed, global warming and climate change are topics everyone should have heard about, at least once. Many individuals and industries are responsible for this issue, and tourism is no exception. Indeed, travel induces a considerable amount of greenhouse gases, notably from planes. Air trips emit significantly more carbon dioxide than other types of transport for each kilometre done by passenger (European Environment Agency, 2014), and planes are overall responsible for 3.5% of global warming (Lee et al., 2021). Finding ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is crucial, so that future generations have a chance at living in a safe environment, with enough resources to cater for their needs. Thus, helping the current population switch from plane trips to less emitting types of transport could be part of the solution to protect the planet better.

Recommendations

The recommendations proposed below are based on the interviews conducted, the literature review and a personal synthesis. They are divided into several categories relating to regulations, train and bus improvements and nudges.. 

The proposed regulations are in line with the third part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report, published on 4 April 2022. It states that governments should take actions to help citizens reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, for instance in the form of policies and infrastructures. In this thesis, the suggested regulations is to introduce a global tax on plane trips, as well as a carbon quota to create a limit of kilometres travellers are allowed to fly. Even though they might not be well received by the population, these radical measures would significantly decrease emissions stemming from the aviation industry. Another policy could be to forbid domestic flights when fast train connections are possible.

Some recommendations for train improvements are also made, classified by the themes defined in the synthesis of the interviews. For comfort and services, it is suggested to offer snacks and refreshments on trains, especially for long distances, as well as to develop the offer of a luggage service. Moreover, to improve destination offers, expanding the network of night trains and high-speed trains throughout Europe is recommended, along with improving and standardising the booking system. Regarding prices, informing travellers that train tickets are sometimes cheaper than plane tickets would be a good start, even though standardising ticket prices or introducing dynamic prices would further encourage travellers to take the train. Lastly, informing travellers that train trips are sometimes faster than plane trips is also essential, as there seems to be a public misconception on the topic.

Comfort and services seem to be the main issues regarding travelling by buses; thus, several improvements are proposed on this topic, starting with improving the seats in terms of space and cosiness and creating an arrangement for luggage so that travellers do not have to bring it with them but still feel that it is kept somewhere safe. Furthermore, launching some high standard buses with an elevated level of comfort and services, as well as establishing some quiet lines for passengers who desire a calm environment, are two other measures proposed. Finally, offering a food and drink service would also be appreciated. 

The last category of recommendations focuses on nudges. Popularised by Thaler and Sunstein in 2009, who studied how human decisions could be influenced, nudges are helpful to raise awareness or create new habits. Some ideas of nudges developed in this paper are to set the default proposition to trains instead of planes on booking platforms and to display the number of people who switched to a train trip, while providing additional information on the length and price of a train alternative. Other recommendations include introducing paid journey days for travelling by train or bus, developing frequent rider programs, and lastly, informing passengers about how much carbon dioxide their flight would induce.

Full Bachelor Thesis : «Decreasing environmental impacts of tourisme through convenient plane-free travel» (pdf - 2.57 MiB)

Source of the visual: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BvVmDBWDDd2I3Qd16hGy3jp0BBI=/1400x1400/filters:format(jpeg)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18332708/Co2Plane_loop__jpg.jpg