Investigating the Travel Information-Seeking Behavior for Daily Trips in a Greek Medium Sized City

Abstract

The deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new options for travel information seeking. Dissemination of travel information to travelers could have immediate benefits such as reduction of travelers’ uncertainty, congestion alleviation, reduction of travel time and cost. However, daily trips in a medium sized city are often based on habitual patterns and not on received travel information. By addressing the factors that urge the users to access travel information in a medium sized city, an information provision strategy could be developed, to serve the needs of the commuters and improve the daily traffic situation. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the travel information seeking in the urban environment of Volos city, in Greece. A digital questionnaire was formulated to investigate the seeking of travel information for daily trips and its impact on commuters’ mobility and travel choices. The final sample size comprised 108 users. The analysis of the data was done through descriptive and inferential statistics. Results showed that online sources of travel information are more preferable by the respondents. Moreover, information about traffic congestion or rerouting is often used by non-sustainable mode users, while sustainable mode users are more interested in information about public transport itineraries. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.