Abstract Body

Long-haul travels represent a significant contributor of CO_2e in the atmosphere (Durbarry & Seetanah, 2015). However, research has not addressed yet the exploration of the personal and situational factors that lead to the selection of unsustainable modes of transport for such long trips (De Angelis et al., 2020), hence boosting clean energies for this type of journeys.

The present study explored personal and situational factors as possible antecedents of travel mode selection for long-distance travels. Among these the most relevant are the biospheric values, namely the extent to which “people judge phenomena on the basis of costs or benefits to ecosystems or the biosphere” (Stern & Dietz, 1994, p. 70), service satisfaction, travel distance, and the geographic location of departure and arrival.

A sample of 700 students and alumni of the Erasmus+ population responded to an online survey measuring attitudes, modal choice, and travel distance and determining departure and arrival location. The research design is cross-sectional and a moderated logistic regression was used for analyzing the data.

Results highlight how biospheric values, travel distance, and the geographic location of departure and arrival are significant antecedents of travel mode selection for long-haul travels. The sustainability of the selected modes of travel are associated with the here considered values, but situational factors moderate such association.

The cross-sectional design precludes causality or chronological order of changes.

Thus, the present paper provides valuable knowledge on which factors to consider when promoting sustainable long-haul travels is the aim. Also, it provides unique insights for more accurate CO_2e estimations, when the incidence of behavioural factors are included in such computations.

Although, long-haul travels represent a significant contributor of CO_2e in the atmosphere (Durbarry & Seetanah, 2015), the study of personal and situational factors that lead to the selection of unsustainable modes of transport remains unexplored (De Angelis et al., 2020). The present study analyses both personal and situational factors and provides the scientific community with relevant findings to promote more sustainable long-haul trips.

Abstract Body

Tackling the climate crisis represents an essential goal of the global society. Promoting sustainable commuting represents a valuable contribution in this regard, and organisations could act as frontrunners in tackling this challenge. Accordingly, the conceptualisation and measurement of how organisational environments contribute to sustainable commuting become relevant. This study aims to conceptualise and operationalise the new construct of Organizational Climate for Sustainable Commuting (OCSC) and validate the OCSC scale both in Italian and English. Data were gathered in an Italian university, 8542 participants responded to the Italian version and 224 participants to the English one. The validation of both versions was based on exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, reliability analyses, and aggregation indices analyses. Convergent and discriminant validity, correlation analyses, internal construct validity, and evidence of criterion-related validity were applied to validate the scales further. The results confirmed a unidimensional structure for both versions of the tool and indicated satisfactory reliability. Aggregation of the scores to the departmental level was justified and significant positive correlations between OCSC and other sustainability-related variables were found. Internal construct validity, convergent validity and concurrent validity were tested. Evidence for discriminant validity was provided only for the Italian version. The OCSC scale was proven to be a valid and reliable measurement. The English version has shown to be reliable and valid only at the individual level. The proposed concept and its related scales offer a new perspective and measure to be used when promoting sustainable commuting is the objective.