engleski

The relationship between travel behavior, ICT usage and social networks in university students in 3 European cities.

The relatively recent and continuous developments in Information and Telecommunication Technologies (ICT), arose the interest of both researcher and policymakers about how these technologies could shape travel behavior. Several hypotheses have been put forward when relating the use of ICT and travel behavior. These include substitution of travel ; complementarity or induction ; modification or neutrality. Consequently, this topic has been the subject of relevant research efforts, with a strong focus on the role of telecommuting as a way to reduce travel and its negative environmental impacts. The relation between ICT usage and other motives of travel have not been so thoroughly researched. One of these is social travel. More recent technological developments, in particular the development of the web 2.0 and social media, as well as the dissemination of smartphones and related web applications increase the potential usefulness of ICT to influence social travel behavior. Particularly relevant in this context are the concepts of activity fragmentation and multitasking, greatly supported by the dissemination of ICT devices and internet access, and the study of the role of social networks and their characteristics in influencing mobility patterns. The work presented here is the results obtained from a web-survey applied to university students in 3 southern European cities, Lisbon, Granada and Zagreb. The survey was aimed at studying the relations between ICT and social media usage, social networks and social travel in this specific sociodemographic group. Specifically it aims to investigate a series of potential research questions related with the effect of ICT on social travel, its interaction with social networks, and, how the perception of its usefulness influences it usage. A secondary objective is to research the existence of differences between these three places and examine the role of cultural differences in explaining them. A description of the obtained results is presented as well as a series of statistical tests related with the research questions that oriented the survey design. Based on these results policy and behavioral implications are examined and discussed.

travel behavior; ICT; social networks

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