Abstract
Tourism trips in New Zealand are strongly car-dominated. Research suggests that such car use practices do not only emerge from purely rational economic considerations but also result from symbolic and affective motives, institutionalized mobility cultures, and habitualized mobility practices that have developed and materialized in spatial structures over decades. This paper explores the notion of automobility and its influence on the domestic tourism mobilities of Christchurch residents. It does so by applying Q methodology, an inherently mixed method that involves participants structuring statements by their level of agreement, followed by a range of qualitative post-sorting questions. The statements draw on insights from the study of tourism mobilities, mobility cultures and classical mode choice research, allowing this study to provide novel insights into the under-researched field of urban–rural tourism mobility. The juxtaposition of quantitative Q and the qualitative interview results reveals influential factors at the personal, interpersonal, societal/political and infrastructural level. The results then feed into a conceptualisation of influential factors of tourism mobility choices using an embedded, interlinked structure that captures the dynamics of social interactions (i.e., feedback-loops). Policy implications are discussed with regards to possible sustainability pathways in line with New Zealand’s decarbonisation strategy.
Highlights
New Zealand is a country that is well-known for its vast natural landscapes, breath-taking sceneries and a unique diversity in flora and fauna, and its tourism marketing has focused on these landscapes and natural features since the very beginning of tourism in the late 19th century [1]
The results feed into a conceptualisation of influential factors of tourism mobility choices using an embedded, interlinked structure that captures the dynamics of social interactions
The relevance of the results extends beyond classical policy-making, since tourism mobility touches upon destination management, cooperation between private and public stakeholders, and transport policy-makers at different spatial levels
Summary
New Zealand is a country that is well-known for its vast natural landscapes, breath-taking sceneries and a unique diversity in flora and fauna, and its tourism marketing has focused on these landscapes and natural features since the very beginning of tourism in the late 19th century [1]. New Zealand’s second largest city and the tourist source market investigated in this study, Christchurch, has undergone various efforts in the past years to promote cycling and public transport (PT) usage. Many of these initiatives have been part of the rebuilding processes after the 2010/11 earthquakes hit this city of 340,000 inhabitants characterized by a polycentric urban structure and low urban density. Despite there being no uniform global experience of car travel, the various forms of car-focused tourism mobilities prevail in most Western—as well as many developing—countries They can be conceptualized as automobilities, reflecting “a simultaneous achievement of autonomy and mobility” [12]. As pointed out by Hannam et al [9], the study of tourism (auto)mobilities, as framed within the mobilities paradigm, understands travelling as an activity that is strongly bound to people’s every-day life and social realities, rather than an isolated event outside the normal, tying the problems arising from tourism automobility into a matter of every-day life choices
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