Traveling Long-Distance with Bad Conscience? Discrepancies Between Everyday and Long-Distance Travel of Urbanites

The currently growing awareness about the climate change is in conflict with one’s own behavior resulting from global trends such as the globalization and new lifestyles, that involve an increase of long-distance travel. Whereas people living in urban areas tend to travel short distances with environmentally friendly means of transport in everyday life, studies indicate a higher amount of long-distance travel of urbanites. The question arises whether behavior and norms in everyday life affects long-distance travel behavior. By using data from surveys in Hamburg and Berlin (Germany), we analyze the long-distance travel behavior of urban people in a comprehensive context including everyday travel, attitudes and norms, sociodemographic as well as spatial characteristics as a proxy for urbanity. Of particular relevance is, whether there are discrepancies or similarities between the behavior in everyday life and the long-distance travel behavior. The results indicate, that people who live in highly urban areas are most likely to travel more than 3,000 km, which involves primarily air travel. This effect is reduced only by the ecological norm of the individuals. People who pay attention to sustainable means of transport in their daily lives are less likely to be long-haul travelers. We see, however, that the effect of living in dense urban areas overcompensates the effect of the ecological norm. Shifting leisure activities to everyday life also reduces the probability of traveling to distant places. This indicates an offset between the everyday and the long-distance travel behavior of individuals.