In industrialized countries, mobility represents one of the most important sources of CO2 emissions. Most
research on promoting sustainable, climate-friendly modes of transportation has focused on urban areas.
Rural areas-although characterized by high dependency on individual car ownership and usage-have
received less attention. This article explores the potential role of rural employers in supporting sustainable
alternatives to commuting by (single-occupied) motorized vehicles among their employees. We conduct a
collective case study that considers five employers located in Eastern Austria (Burgenland), drawing from
multiple data sources including structured surveys, expert interviews, focus groups, and site visits. Our
analysis shows that employers have little incentive to implement measures that foster sustainable mobility
among their employees. On the one hand, the costs accruing to employers for implementing such measures
tend to exceed the corresponding benefits by a significant margin (unlike in urban areas where significant
cost reductions can arise for employers). On the other hand, also employees generally exhibit little
demand for such measures. We conclude that both from a societal and a business perspective, it is not efficient
to promote sustainable mobility in rural areas via employers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:5955 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Soder, Michael, Peer, Stefanie |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) |
| Relation | https://doi.org/10.1080/15568318.2017.1402974, http://taylorandfrancis.com//journals/, http://epub.wu.ac.at/5955/ |
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