Abstract
Purpose Daily commuting trips of higher education (HE) students account for a large proportion of the carbon footprint of a HE institution. Considerations of students underlying their choice of travel mode and their decision to make the trip to campus or to study online are explored as a necessary first step for finding an optimal balance between online and on-campus learning from both a sustainability and an educational perspective. Design/methodology/approach Focus group conversations were held with student groups from different study programmes of a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands. Findings Dutch students’ travel mode choices seem to depend on measures regulating travel demand such as a free public transport card and high parking costs. The findings indicate that students make reasoned choices about making a trip to campus. These choices depend on considerations about their schedule, type, lecturer and content of a course, social norms and their own perceived behavioural control. Alternative online options can provide students with more flexibility to make choices adapted to their needs. Social implications While these findings are useful for sustainable and educational reasons, they also seem helpful in times of COVID-19 which calls for a re-design of curricula to allow for blended forms of online and on-campus learning. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first studies looking at students’ considerations when deciding whether to travel to campus to learn or stay at home learning online.
Highlights
Stimulating a shift to low-carbon travel modes is one of the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC, 2014, p. 603) to countries for lowering their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Our findings show that their travel mode choices mainly depend on costs and an adequate infrastructure for bicycle and public transport, which are, in most cases, measures at a national level
higher educational institutions (HEIs) can contribute to these measures by imposing parking restrictions for students
Summary
Stimulating a shift to low-carbon travel modes is one of the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC, 2014, p. 603) to countries for lowering their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Number in brackets Motivator Environment, convenient, travel to city (2), short travel time (2), reliable, other activities during is the frequency travel (4), no costs (5), personal chauffeur, bad weather conditions (4) Defining attitudes and collecting associated perceptions towards travel mode and trip generation With the information of the preceding steps, the attitudes and associated perceptions of the participants were distilled. These attitudes and perceptions were translated into English and depicted in a table.
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