Understanding How Personal Climate-Conscious Beliefs Influence Air Travel Behavior and Modeling Its Potential Impact on Air Travel Volumes

Abstract

As concerns about the impacts of travel-related carbon emissions continue to grow, understanding how air travel volumes may change in response to public perceptions, industry actions, or governmental intervention is critical for forecasting impacts on the airline industry. This paper aims to determine: (a) how prevalent personal climate-conscious beliefs are in the United States; (b) whether these beliefs, specifically carbon emission-consciousness, are linked to air travel behavior; and (c) how carbon emissions-focused changes in the airline industry might influence air travel and expenditures. This was achieved by (a) collecting and analyzing a unique U.S. nationally-representative climate-conscious and long-distance travel survey and (b) conducting eight Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate how carbon emissions-focused changes in the airline industry could change air travel and expenditures on a subset of the U.S. population for simulated agents of Georgia, Nebraska, and Washington. This research’s findings suggest that increases in ticket pricing, absence of carbon emission-reducing actions by airlines, and/or increase in public concern for airplane emissions could reduce U.S. air travel volumes. While both work and vacation travel volumes—and associated expenditures—could reduce, vacation volumes could see a greater reduction on average than work travel. Overall, results suggest that carbon emissions concerns may reduce U.S. air travel volumes if certain actions, or inactions, are taken. It is thus suggested that further research be done on the influence of personal climate-conscious beliefs on air travel behavior to better inform the air travel industry, lawmakers, and other decision-makers.