This paper contests the conventional wisdom that travel is a derived demand, at least as an absolute. Rather, we suggest that under some circumstances, travel is desired for its own sake. We discuss the phenomenon of undirected travel ± cases in which travel is not a byproduct of the activity but itself constitutes the activity. The same reasons why people enjoy undirected travel (a sense of speed, motion, control, enjoyment of beauty) may motivate them to undertake excess travel even in the context of mandatory or maintenance trips. One characteristic of undirected travel is that the destination is ancillary to the travel rather than the converse which is usually assumed. We argue that the destination may be to some degree ancillary more often than is realized. Measuring a positive anity for travel is complex: in selfreports of attitudes toward travel, respondents are likely to confound their utility for the activities conducted at the destination, and for activities conducted while traveling, with their utility for traveling itself. Despite this measurement challenge, preliminary empirical results from a study of more than 1900 residents of the San Francisco Bay Area provide suggestive evidence for a positive utility for travel, and for a desired travel time budget (TTB). The issues raised here have clear policy implications: the way people will react to policies intended to reduce vehicle travel will depend in part on the relative weights they assign to the three components of a utility for travel. Improving our forecasts of travel behavior may require viewing travel literally as a``good'' as well as a``bad'' (disutility). Ó
This paper offers a conceptual exploration of the potential impacts of ICTs on leisure activities and the associated travel. We start by discussing what leisure is and is not. We point out that the boundaries between leisure, mandatory, and maintenance activities are permeable, for three reasons: the multi-attribute nature of a single activity, the sequential interleaving of activity fragments, and the simultaneous conduct of multiple activities (multitasking).We then discuss four kinds of ways by which ICT can affect leisure activities and travel: the replacement of a traditional activity with an ICT counterpart, the generation of new ICT activities (that displace other activities), the ICT-enabled reallocation of time to other activities, and ICT as a facilitator of leisure activities. We suggest 13 dimensions of leisure activities that are especially relevant to the issue of ICT impacts: location (in)dependence, mobility-based v. stationary, time (in)dependence, planning horizon, temporal structure and fragmentation, possible multitasking, solitary v. social activity, active v. passive participation, physical v. mental, equipment/media (in)dependence, informal v. formal arrangements required, motivation, and cost.The primary impact of ICT on leisure is to expand an individual's choice set; however whether or not the new options will be chosen depends on the attributes of the activity (such as the 13 identified dimensions), as well as those of the individual. The potential transportation impacts when the new options are chosen are ambiguous.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.