17th International Conference on Travel Behavior Research
July 14-18, 2024, Vienna, Austria
Transformative Travel Behaviour Research - Looking beyond Back-to-Normal
copyright by: Gebhard Sengmueller
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic having become endemic, ‘back to normality’ is not something that everybody can expect. The increase of digitalisation in our daily lives, the uncertainty about supply chain and economic conditions, and the introduction of new habits and values during the pandemic time have challenged the notion of “typical travel patterns” and raised questions on the assumptions underlying our transport models. In parallel, the impacts of climate change in recent years are becoming more and more apparent and knowledge on how we can identify the triggers that lead to a profound, transformative behaviour change beyond what we can see with our traditional approaches is critical to achieve our carbon net-zero target.
Whilst the uncertainties of user behaviours and transport supplies make travel demand modelling more difficult than ever, the interdisciplinary knowledge and advancement of methodologies and technologies enable us to explore new approaches in order to understand and forecast human decisions better. This knowledge would be critical in promoting a sustainable behavioural change, with the right disruptive methods and interventions, and in creating accessible and inclusive climate-neutral cities.
The conference is organized by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences and taking place at the Main Building of the University of Vienna.
The conference welcomes submissions on all aspects of travel behaviour research and application. The following nine thematic categories have been selected as the main focus areas:
- active mobility, life-stages, and quality of life
- adoption, adaptation, and impacts of new technologies
- time-use and locational choices
- innovative data collection methods and alternative data sources
- psychometrics, attitudes, and perceptions
- pattern recognition in decision-making processes
- transformative policy and behavioural change
- advanced modelling and simulation
- other relevant topics
Important Dates
| Deadline of abstract submission | 30 September 2023 |
| Distribution of review results | 31 January 2024 |
| Deadline to propose a self-organise workshop | 31 January 2024 |
| Early registration opening | 15 March 2024 to 13 May 2024 |
| Start of the conference | 14 July 2024 |
Post-Conference Publications
A number of special issues in selected journals have been planned for this conference.
The journals which are currently planned to facilitate the post-conference special issues or will have SI on topics relevant for this conference include:
- Transportation Research part A: Policy and Practice
- Transportation Research part B: Methodological
- Transportation
- Journal of Transport Geography
- Transportation Letters
- Journal Transport and Health
- Journal of Choice Modelling
- European Transport Research Review
- European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research
- Travel Behaviour and Society
- Transportation Planning and Technology
A separate submission and review process will be done according to each journal regulation and standard process.
Welcome and Opening Plenary
Leonore Gewessler
© BMK/Perwein
Leonore Gewessler
Ms. Leonore Gewessler is the Austrian Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology since January 7, 2020. After graduating in political science from the University of Vienna, Ms. Gewessler worked at the Office of the leader of Vienna’s 7th district until 2008. Then she moved to the Green European Foundation in Brussels, where she took over the management of the Europe-wide NGO. From 2014 to 2019, Ms. Gewessler was the Executive Director of Global 2000 environmental protection organization, before becoming Deputy Chairwoman of the Green Parliamentary Group (Parliamentary Group of the Green Members of the National Council, the Federal Council and the European Parliament), a position she held until January 6, 2020. In addition to her business career, she was - among others - a Member of the Executive Board of Friends of the Earth Austria.
Gerd Sammer
Gerd Sammer
Gerd Sammer is emeritus Professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), Vienna. He studied civil engineering with specialization in transportation at the Technical University Graz and finished his Master Degree in 1968, his PhD degree in 1971 and his habilitation in 1981 in the field of transport planning and traffic engineering. Until 1995 he worked at TU Graz before being appointed as Professor and Head of the Institute for Transport Studies at BOKU which he managed until 2012. In addition to his academic career, he is managing director of the civil engineering office ZIS+P in Graz since 1987. Gerd is an expert in transportation planning, transport surveys and transport modelling and he has been involved in various national and international research projects in the field of transport. Among many others he served as the Jury Chair of Eric Paz Dissertation Prize for Travel Behavior Research and Board Member of the Forum of Austrian Scientists for Environmental Protection and the Association of International Conference on Transport Survey Quality.
Plenary Speakers
Chandra Bhat
Chandra Bhat
Dr. Chandra R. Bhat is the Joe King Endowed Chair Professor of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and the Director of the National USDOT Center on “Understanding the Future of Travel Behavior and Demand.” He has been a pioneer in the formulation and use of statistical and econometric methods to analyze human choice behavior for transportation and urban policy design. His current research includes the social and environmental aspects of transportation, planning implications of emerging technology and mobility options, and equity considerations in transportation provision. He was listed in 2017 as one of the top ten transportation thought leaders in academia by the Eno Foundation. His former students are now leaders in the travel behavior field, many of whom have also received dissertation/thesis awards for their research under Chandra’s guidance. Chandra has served as an IATBR Chair and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Research – Part B.
Find out more about Chandra
Sonja Haustein
Sonja Haustein
Sonja Haustein is a psychologist and professor in human behaviour at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Her research aims at understanding and predicting behavioural choices to inform interventions towards green, healthy and inclusive transport. Sonja has a long-standing interest in the interactions of the individual with the social, spatial and technological environment as factors influencing behaviour change in transport. In her ERC project ‘URGENT’, she and her interdisciplinary research group use unique longitudinal multi-methods design to better understand the mental mechanisms involved in behaviour change, uncover questions of causality, rebound and spill-over.
Mei-Po Kwan
Mei-Po Kwan
Mei-Po Kwan is Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management and Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Kwan has made ground-breaking contributions to research on environmental health, human mobility, transport and health issues in cities, and geographic information science (GIScience). She discovered the uncertain geographic context problem and the neighborhood effect averaging problem. Her recent projects examine the health impacts of individual environmental exposure (e.g., noise, air pollution, green space), the protection of geoprivacy via the development of a Geospatial Virtual Data Enclave (GVDE), and the space-time dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Martin Raubal
Martin Raubal
Martin Raubal is Professor of Geoinformation Engineering at ETH Zurich. He is also a Steering Committee member of the Center for Sustainable Future Mobility at ETH and a member of the Future Resilient Systems Management Committee at the Singapore-ETH Centre. Martin’s research interests focus on spatial decision-making for sustainability, more specifically he concentrates on mobile Geographic Information Systems & Location Based Services, analysing spatio-temporal aspects of human mobility, spatial cognitive engineering, and mobile eye-tracking to investigate visual attention while interacting with geoinformation and in spatial decision situations.