Tourists' urban travel modes: Choices for enhanced transport and environmental sustainability

This research investigates tourists’ urban travel mode choices in prominent Chinese tourist cities using latent class nested logit modelling. It identifies Comfort-Driven and Economy-Driven market segments, each exhibiting unique preferences towards transport-related factors as measured by elasticity and willingness-to-pay. Travel cost, walking time, waiting time, transfer time, crowdedness, and parking difficulty significantly affect tourists’ urban travel mode choices. Interestingly, car ownership and environmental consciousness have also been proven significant for both segments, while in-vehicle time is only significant for Comfort-Driven segment. The Comfort-Driven segment shows higher willingness-to-pay for reduced walking and transfer times, and prioritising comfort. Conversely, the Economy-Driven segment is more price-sensitive, focusing on value-for-money options that minimise both monetary and non-monetary costs. This study enhances the theoretical understanding of tourists’ transport service consumption and offers practical guidance with tailored strategies for encouraging low-carbon public transportation, hence it could facilitate the alignment of transport, tourism, and environmental sustainability goals.