Cycling tourism in Italy: Multimodal transport behaviours in a latent class analysis

Pantelaki, Evangelia; Crotti, Daniele; Maggi, Elena

Abstract

In the last years, sustainability has become an important issue in tourism debate, and more, cycling tourism as an alternative and green way of travel during holidays has gained popularity. However, the choice of other transport means, complementary to bikes, is of key importance to address the sustainability of cycling experiences. In this paper, we used primary data collected from an on-line survey on bike tourism in Italy in 2020. Besides sociodemographic and bike-related questions, 858 individuals were asked about their own transport modes to move across destinations during cycling holidays. A latent class analysis has been used to identify three groups of people with segmented preferences for bike tourism experiences, including destinations, accommodation, and multimodal behaviours. We found that the largest latent class in Italy is composed by bike tourists with the highest share of females compared to the other two classes, under 60 years old, and with a strong preference for collective transport means. Both from a management and policy perspective, our results support the claim for investments to improve the transport connection among tourism destinations, and to stimulate the creation of bike-friendly environments and tourism facilities.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 4, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jul 8, 2022
• Publication Date: Jun 30, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 26, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Journal: Research in Transportation Business and Management
• Print ISSN: 2210-5395
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Article Number: 100861
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2022.100861
• Keywords: Management Science and Operations Research; Strategy and Management; Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management; Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous); Transportation; Business and International Management; General Decision Sciences
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10005639
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210539522000827?via%3Dihub#!
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Cycling tourism in Italy: Multimodal transport behaviours in a latent class analysis; Journal Title: Research in Transportation Business & Management; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2022.100861; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.