1. Introduction
Fossil fuel use is a primary contributor to human-induced carbon dioxide emissions, which aggravate global climate change [
1]. Transport is responsible for almost 25% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions [
2]. In Sweden, this share is even higher (33%) primarily because electricity generation and heating in Sweden is less dependent on fossil fuels [
3] Both in Sweden and globally, transport is increasing its share of emissions [
2,
4]. At the beginning of 2018, the Swedish climate policy framework came into force, stating that by 2045, Sweden will have net zero emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and should thereafter achieve negative emissions. A separate target was set for the transport sector, declaring that emissions from domestic transport, excluding domestic aviation, will be reduced by at least 70% by 2030 compared with 2010 [
5]. Hence, promoting more sustainable and energy-efficient travel behaviour is of substantial interest, and there is mostly a consensus among transport researchers on the need for levels of transport to be reduced in order for the sector to contribute to more sustainable development [
6,
7]. In order to reach these ambitious targets a number of measures need to be introduced including changing transport behaviour [
8,
9].
Organisations generate a great deal of business travel globally. In Sweden, according to the latest national travel survey (RVU Sweden, 2011–2014), business trips account for 10% of the total number of passenger kilometres travelled per person and day [
10]. Business trips by air have mainly been in focus within media as part of the “flight shame movement” while business trips by car have gained less interest even though they constitute a larger share of total passenger car kilometres per person and day (9% according to RVU Sweden). Further, local and regional public transport authorities have rarely prioritised business travel in their plans though a majority of trips carried out are over short distances less than 10 km and 40% are shorter than 5 km [
10].
Thus, there is a great and untapped potential to contribute to the policy objectives of long-term sustainability in the transport sector by reducing the number of business trips made by cars. Various transport policy measures are available to reduce people’s car use and to increase the use of more sustainable transport modes [
11]. Some of these are referred to as ‘soft’ measures, that focus on voluntary changes such as, campaigns, travel plans for organisations or free public transport tryouts. Such measures aim to motivate individuals to voluntarily change their modes of transport to more sustainable ones [
12] and have been implemented in several countries including Sweden [
13]. Recently, soft measures have been studied in combination with information and communication technologies (ICT) to further promote a shift away from private car use [
14,
15]. While many studies focus on commuting trips [
16], previous research has not sufficiently explored the role of business travel in the transition to a more sustainable transport system. Research on travel behaviour in workplace intervention contexts is needed to advance the understanding of how sustainable business trips can be facilitated in practice [
17].
Further, the ongoing digitalisation has opened the possibility to combine mobility services with ICT to create a package of mobility solutions. Currently, there is a trend of new forms of shared mobility services (referred to as mobility as a service or MaaS) being developed to facilitate a multimodal and sustainable travel behaviour by reducing the need to own a private car [
18]. Several evaluations have been made on these services concerning individual travel behaviour to explore its implementation issues and potential sufficiency in replacing car journeys [
19,
20]. The use of ICT also offers the possibility to avoid the need to travel through the use of digital applications providing virtual access to work, meetings, healthcare, education, etc., in what is referred to as accessibility as a service or AaaS [
21]. Virtual meetings are ICT-enabled accessibility services that substantially can, given the right conditions, reduce the need for business travel [
22,
23]. However, recent studies have questioned whether mobility services such as MaaS will be able to decrease private car use [
24], and suggested that expectations might be inflated [
25], demonstrating the need for more research investigating the sustainability of these new services. Moreover, few studies have investigated the implementation of mobility services in organisations to promote more sustainable business trips.
The current study aims to fill in this research gap by demonstrating a new mobility service application (MSA) for business trips in Sweden and to evaluate it within the context of organisational travel management and practices. Survey data and interviews were used to analyse participant’s travel behaviour change, perceptions of business trips, how they think their organisation manages such trips, and what they thought of the MSA as a support to facilitate more sustainable business trips.
This paper is organised as follows:
Section 2 includes background and summarises previous research on business travel and mobility services.
Section 3 introduces the analytical and theoretical framework.
Section 4 describes the methodology, research design and design of the study.
Section 5 presents the results of the survey and interviews separately, and
Section 6 discusses these results. The study’s conclusions are presented in
Section 7.
4. Methods and Research Design
Through surveys and interview studies, quantitative data were combined with qualitative data. This mixed-method approach enables an analysis of the context, implementation, design and function of the evaluated MSA.
4.1. The MSA
Samtrafiken is owned in equal shares by all regional public transport authorities and most of the commercial public transport operators in Sweden. Samtrafiken connects all public and private transport operators, coordinate public transport data and develops and manage ticketing and payment standards. Over three years (2017–2019), Samtrafiken provided a service consisting of a mobile web application where, among other things, employees of recruited companies, authorities and organisations could manage their business trips by public transport and car. The project was based on the idea that employees should only need one tool regardless of the mode of transport. The MSA provided timetable information as well as the purchase of tickets for local and regional buses, commuter, regional and national train services, registration of car trips, and reporting of travel expenses. Each region had its own outline of the MSA. Through the MSA, the trips by public transport were paid through a monthly invoice including a financial statement from Samtrafiken to the companies, authorities and organisations that were recruited.
Samtrafiken coordinated the project with a reference group consisting of representatives from 6 regional public transport authorities (Hallandstrafiken, Region Kronoberg, Samtrafiken, Stockholm public transport authority, Upplandstrafik and Östgötatrafiken). Through the reference group, users of the MSA were recruited continuously during the first two years of the project. In other words, the researchers who authored this paper did not control the selection of participants. However, throughout the project, the researchers followed the implementation process and evaluated the MSA and its use. In total 13 organisations were recruited and appointed contact persons were provided with information material about the MSA to be distributed in each organisation. Participating actors also provided Samtrafiken with contact information (email addresses) to involved employees, facilitating the evaluation of the MSA.
4.2. Recruitment and Procedure
The total number of persons in the initial target group was 525, employed at four companies, eight public authorities and one NGO. Via the Netigate survey tool, a before and after study was carried out in that an email was sent to each participant with a unique link to the web survey. By this approach, targeted reminders can be sent to those who have not answered the survey (wholly or partially). The e-mails for the before study were sent out in two rounds, in March 2017 and during February–June 2018. The web survey was distributed as new participants came to the project’s knowledge, hence the extended sending period in 2018. Up to three reminders were sent. Trough participating organisations, information on the MSA was spread via workplace meetings, leaflets and emails. In the after study, an email with a web link was solely sent to those who in the before study stated to make business trips. The mailing was made in mid-April 2019. Three reminders were sent. These individuals were also contacted via email with a request for an interview. Statistics on the number of persons in the target group and the number of responses received in each study are presented in
Table 2.
4.3. Design of Studies
4.3.1. Survey
The questions in the before and after study were based on two previous studies on travel behaviour [
50,
51] with some revisions following discussions within the project group. The before-after study consisted of a short travel survey concerning business trips (distance, transport mode, number and frequency of business trips) but also questions regarding attitudes towards various transport modes and perceived possibility to use these modes for business trips. The after study also consisted of questions related to the use of the MSA presented to those stated to have tried the MSA. Of 77 respondents in the after study, 35 respondents used the MSA. Responses from both groups (users and non-users) were analysed in order to analyse the effect of the MSA and for the users, to also gain knowledge on various aspects of the MSA.
In the before-after study, respondents were asked to answer some questions about business trips related to their perceived possibility to use public transport, how easy they think that is for them, and to what extent their near colleagues use public transport. The first question was stated as ‘How possible is it for you to travel by bus/train for business trips’ (performance expectancy)? The second was a statement saying, ‘You think that using the bus/train is difficult’ (effort expectancy). The third question was ‘Your closest colleagues, who also make business trips, how often do you think they travel by bus/train’ (social influence)? Each question was asked once for bus trips and once for train trips, and the scale was from 1 to 7, where 1 was impossible/totally agree/very seldom and 7 was very possible/totally disagree/very often. The mean score was then computed from the bus/train questions to get an average public transport score for each determinant. Histograms were produced to control for the assumption of normality, which indicated roughly normal distribution for effort expectancy and social influence, but the third determinant, performance expectancy, seemed to deviate from this assumption. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests suggested that the data are normally distributed for effort expectancy (p = 0.200 and 0.428) and social influence (p = 0.200 and 0.57). Conversely, for performance expectancy, both tests were statistically significant (p = 0.006 and 0.001, respectively), indicating a normality violation for that variable.
Attempts were made to normalise the performance expectancy variable using three different transformations (square root, reflected inverse, and log base 10) but neither succeeded to improve the shape of the distribution for the variable. Therefore, it was decided to omit that variable from the analysis and proceed with tests on effort expectancy and social influence. Significance tests were conducted between the before-after study for MSA users and non-users respectively too see whether the MSA influenced these two determinants.
In the after study, the respondents were also asked how often the MSA has been used for different types of business trips using scale 1 = never and 7 = always. In the after study, the users also answered questions about how good the application had been regarding various functions. The functions, graded on a scale from 1 = very bad, 7 = very good, were technology, login, real-time information, invoice handling and information on where to find stops. Finally, questions about virtual business meetings were asked, how they use such meetings today and if it would be useful for them to have that kind of service in the MSA.
4.3.2. Interviews
Ten individual interviews and nine focus groups were conducted (a total of 19 interviews) with a total of 40 people, see
Table 3. The definition of a focus group here is when an interview takes place with two or more people. In some organisations, several interviews were conducted. There were 12 organisations represented. For practical reasons, seven interviews were conducted over the phone. On average, an interview took between 1 and 1½ h. The interviews were conducted during February and March 2019. In most cases, the interviews were conducted at the informant’s workplace. The recruitment to the interview study was carried out before the after study; thus, it was not possible to identify the MSA users preceding this. Thus, in the interviews, there was a mix of respondents that used the MSA, tried to use the MSA but did not succeed for any reasons, and non-users of the MSA.
Interviews were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of how business trips are planned and implemented, how temporal and organisational constraints affect opportunities to manage business trips, and the extent to which an MSA meets these needs. Interviews also provide an understanding of how this type of service works for the organisation (both administrative and organisational aspects).
Semi-structured interviews were used to ensure that a number of important issues were covered in all interviews, but also to provide opportunities for respondents to bring up issues the interviewer had not considered [
52]. Interviews thus took the form of conversations in which the interviewer asked open-ended questions and follow-up questions within relatively broad pre-defined themes. The following themes were addressed during the interviews:
Distance to work and means of transport;
Frequency of business trips, distance and means of transport;
Travel Policies;
Virtual meetings;
Meeting and travel culture;
Questions about the MSA.
The analysis took a content analysis approach [
53]. The interviews were recorded with the informant’s consent and then transcribed. After that, the transcripts were coded and analysed thematically. Initial coding mainly used the pre-defined themes from the interviews; subsequent coding and analysis developed themes and sub-themes in an interplay between the empirical data and existing research and theory [
54,
55]. The most important analytical themes that emerged from this process are presented in the following sections and discussed in relation to the UTAUT.
In the presentation of the results, quotes from the interviews are used to illustrate the respondent’s reasoning. These are reproduced verbatim but may have been adjusted for reading comprehension. If the text needs clarification, this has been written in brackets.
6. Discussion
This study aimed to evaluate a new MSA for business trips within the context of organisational travel management and practices. The findings suggest that participants were generally positive towards the MSA and that there is potential to improve conventional systems managing business trips. Still, there is a heterogeneity aspect of users and actors to consider when designing interventions promoting sustainable business trips. Different levels of actors influence practices related to business travel, and our findings demonstrated the importance of involving the management in the facilitation of travel policies, travel cultures, and other facilitating conditions such as convenient accessibility to sustainable modes of transport and discouragement of unsustainable ones. New MSAs must be compatible with existing systems within the business travel practice, be well functioning and perceived as an improvement compared to the conventional system, to be utilised. This study also demonstrates some methodological challenges with evaluating new mobility applications. We discuss these issues in more detail below.
6.1. Evaluating the MSA
The survey results indicated that effort expectancy got more favourable for MSA users, providing tentative results that the intervention could have increased the ease associated with the use of sustainable business trips. This insight was reinforced by the interviews where several respondents stated that the MSA made it easier to travel by public transport, partly because of the automatic handling of travel expenses. At the same time, many stated that the MSA had several shortcomings that need to be addressed to make it competitive. In addition to the purely technical aspects, the MSA was expected to offer more ticket options and be easier to use. An important reason for not using the MSA was that existing business travel booking systems were either procured and thus employees had to use that service, or that existing booking systems were more flexible and offered more personalised service. Earlier research has stressed the need to adjust interventions to the need of the user and to contextualise content to make it more relevant to the user [
56,
57,
58]. While it often is more practical to develop one system for all, previous research has stressed the need to adapt systems for users with diverging needs and expectations in order to increase the uptake of interventions for sustainable mobility [
14]. Some respondents in this study felt that the current booking system has an advantage in that it offers personalised service, which includes not only the trip itself but also the booking of overnight stays. Should problems arise, it can be felt like security to be able to contact a booking manager who can solve the situation. However, several pointed out that the current system also had its shortcomings and that there was a potential to introduce a booking system similar to the evaluated MSA, especially if such a system made it possible to book several different types of transport services, and also accommodation. From the responses to the survey to judge, there also seems to be reasons to include the possibility of booking virtual meetings in such an MSA.
There are many factors that play a role in the choice of transport, which is hardly controlled by just one application. However, it seems that the current business travel management system lacks features that make it easy to make sustainable travel choices. Thus, there should be potential for new systems that are designed in line with the user’s preferences and needs, while at the same time facilitating sustainable business travel.
6.2. The Crucial Organisational Context
From the interviews, it became clear that business travel is produced within an organisational context that differs significantly between organisations. Travel policy, access to travel modes and to virtual meetings, and organisational culture are all contextual factors beyond the individual’s direct influence when deciding whether to go travelling or not, or choosing means of transport for a business trips. These factors are determined by the management, who was often referred to by employees as a cause for weak compliance to sustainable business trips. Although the majority of organisations had a travel policy, many respondents claimed that employees either did not follow it or knew it existed and that this was often ignored by management. The important role of managers in promoting sustainable business trips have been stressed in earlier research. Gustafson [
26] found that travel managers often operate below management and that one reason for weak compliance with travel policies is employees’ high levels of autonomy over business trips decisions. They prioritise travel time, comfort and convenience over costs and environmental impact. Further, senior staffs and managers might not support the travel policy in practice. As pointed out by Gustafson [
26], travel managers often have lower hierarchical positions and lower status than many of the travellers whose travel they are supposed to manage. Lo et al. [
17] found that social norms and managerial control were more important in determining business travel frequency and mode choice than commuting travel mode choice.
Although organisations differed on travel policies for business travel and how these are applied in practice, there were examples indicating that a well-established travel policy, incentives that promote cycling and public transport in combination with restrictions on car travel, and the development of an organisational culture that promotes sustainable business travel, creates the favourable conditions for employees to make more sustainable business trips, or to choose a virtual meeting alternative.
6.3. Methodological Reflections
Although the offer to participate in the study was given to a relatively large sample (
n = 525), the proportion of participants who used the MSA and completed the surveys was too small to adequately analyse the quantitative effects of changed travel behaviour as a result of the MSA. The participants who did use the MSA and completed the surveys (
n = 35) were already travelling more with public transport compared to the non-users. This was also true for the respondents in the interviews. One weakness was that the researchers in the project were not the ones who introduced the MSA to the participants, but it was done by practitioners linked to the organisations. This reduced the ability to control the representability of respondents. The share of MSA users (18% of the respondents making business trips) is in line with the theory of diffusion of innovation estimating the segments of innovators and early adopters to 20% [
59], indicating a bias in the analysed sample towards these groups. The problems with attrition and self-selection bias in app-based intervention research have been raised in another paper of this issue [
60]. As put forward by these authors, it is challenging to retain participant’s interest over time, especially for app-based interventions that suffer from higher dropout rates than other interventions due to a gradual loss of interest in new applications. Moreover, self-recruitment of participants “tends to raise interest in already motivated subgroups of the general population, frequently individuals with high environmental awareness and pro-environmental attitude who may even have already adopted sustainable consumption patterns…” [
60]. The participants in this study were recruited from organisations, which is usually an advantage considering that management can encourage participation and thus increase both the number of participants and the heterogeneity of these. In the current case, the engagement of management differed between organisations and a lesson is thus to secure their involvement to increase participation rates. The issue of dropouts was evident in this study as well; only 35 of 193 respondents used the MSA for the full test-period. The dropout was also due to the fact that the MSA had technical weaknesses, and that some participants already had sufficient tools to manage their business travel. Therefore, future studies should carefully consider what type of information and incentives could increase participation.