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Australian baby boomers switched to more environment friendly modes of transport during the global financial crisis

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Abstract

The global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008 rocked economies around the world. Several intermediate outcomes of the GFC included loss of jobs and reduced income. Relatively little research has, however, examined the impacts of the GFC on individual level travel behaviour change. To address this shortcoming, HABITAT panel data were employed to estimate a multinomial logit model to examine mode switching behaviour between 2007 and 2009 of a baby boomers cohort in Brisbane, Australia—a city within a developed country that has been on many metrics the least affected by the GFC. In addition, a Poisson regression model was estimated to model the number of trips made by individuals in 2007, 2008, and 2009. The South East Queensland travel survey datasets were used to develop this model. Four linear regression models were estimated to assess the effects of the GFC on time allocated to travel during a day: one for each of the three travel modes including public transport, active transport, less environmentally friendly transport; and an overall travel time model irrespective of mode. The results reveal that the baby boomers switched to more environmentally friendly travel modes during the GFC.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (QDTMR) for the provision of Household Travel Survey Data Sets used in this research. We also acknowledge and cordially thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, which helped us to improve the manuscript. Gavin Turrell is funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship (ID 1003710).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering and the Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, QLD, 4000, Australia

    Md. Kamruzzaman, T. Yigitcanlar & S. Washington

  2. Institute of Transport Studies, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    G. Currie

  3. School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, QLD, 4059, Australia

    G. Turrell

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  1. Md. Kamruzzaman
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  2. T. Yigitcanlar
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Correspondence to Md. Kamruzzaman.

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Kamruzzaman, M., Yigitcanlar, T., Washington, S. et al. Australian baby boomers switched to more environment friendly modes of transport during the global financial crisis. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 11, 2133–2144 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-014-0564-5

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