When contemplating making a journey, people will take into account the likely expenditure of personal resources involved. Time and money costs have hitherto been the dominant metric in studies of transport choices. Recent research has pointed to the centrality of the notion of 'convenience' in travel and travel mode decisions. A journey is considered inconvenient, to the extent that it involves the unanticipated or unwelcome expenditure of physical effort, mental or cognitive effort, and emotional or affective effort. This paper gives examples of each kind of personal resource expenditure and reports some findings from a study of transport interchange in which self-report rating measures of the amount and the acceptability of efforts expended in making a journey were developed. A sample of interchanging bus travellers rated whether the efforts required for their 2-bus journey were more than they would like, less, or 'about right'. Interchanging train travellers also rated how much physical, cognitive and affective effort were required for their 2-train trip leg. Crosstabulation showed individual differences in how much was 'just right'. Car drivers rated both their current car commute and their available alternative 2-bus commute for amount and acceptability of efforts involved, allowing comparison within and across mode. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).
Abstract