This report examines the effect of ICT on travel behaviour by testing preconceptions, using a survey of early adopters of ICT. Two hypotheses have been tested. First, it is often suggested that ICT contributes to the enlargement of the spatial scale of our daily life. The results of the survey underscore that this is indeed the case. Enlarge-ment of spatial scale is most apparent in business relations and in social relationships with friends. The results also confirm that the availability of ICT has had an impact on the number of visits to recreational destinations. For daytrips and holiday destinations, in particular, the use of such ICT services as the Internet has to led an increase in jour-neys to more distant locations. Second, the report looks at whether ICT has changed business travel. Not much evi-dence was found of this. ICT does make business travel more enjoyable. Almost a quar-ter of the respondents said that with the convenience of mobile telephones, travelling has become less burdensome and that, because of this, they make more trips. Specula-tion that ICT would make public meeting places along infrastructure more popular be-cause work would be less fixed to the office was not observed. ICT does, however, fos-ter working from home or at a client’s place of business. We can conclude from the research that the effects from e-mail, Internet and mobile phones on social and business traffic may very well be greater than the much-researched effects from teleworking or teleshopping. More research, is however needed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract