TØI Vitenarkiv
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Do visitors gaze and reproduce what destination managers wish to commercialise? Perceived and projected image in the UNESCO World Heritage area ‘West Norwegian Fjords’
Get PDFDestination image plays a key role in helping people decide where to travel and affects satisfaction, likelihood of return visits and word of mouth. While photography is not the only way of projecting and perceiving an image, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. The rise of social media and usergenerated content has made the image formation process more complex, and has reduced the extent of control that tourism suppliers can exert on the image they wish to project. It is thus necessary to further investigate whether tourists reproduce the commercialised image in what the literature calls the ‘hermeneutic circle of representation’ or capture and share their own impressions. This study constructs a categorisation scheme for conducting photography-based image analysis to compare images of two Norwegian destinations as projected by destination management organisations with those shared by Instagram users (perceived image). Results indicate that this circle of representation is not hermeneutic.submittedVersio
Procedure Negligence in Coastal Cargo: What Can Be Done to Reduce the Gap between Formal and Informal Aspects of Safety?
Get PDFPrevious studies from the coastal cargo sector report of a considerable gap between formal and informal aspects of safety. Several maritime accident investigations point to this gap as an important contributory cause, indicating that risk increases when informal practices ignore or violate formal procedures. The main aims of this paper are therefore to examine the factors influencing procedure negligence in the coastal cargo sector, and to discuss how to reduce the gap between formal and informal aspects of safety. The study is based on quantitative survey results of 180 crewmembers and qualitative research interviews with 10 leading officers on cargo vessels sailing along the coast of Norway. Survey results indicate that procedure negligence is related to work pressure and demanding working conditions. It is also related to outcome measures like personal injuries and perceptions of risk and safety. A positive organizational safety culture is experienced by respondents reporting of less procedure negligence. Interview results indicate, for example, that formal procedures are ignored or violated because of issues like efficiency demands and low-quality procedures, and that procedures more often are followed when they are perceived as useful and timely. In this article, it is thus suggested that a positive safety culture includes an alignment of formal and informal aspects of safety, which requires time to comply with practical procedures. Interviewees suggest that appropriate procedures are: (1) developed by the users, (2) continuously improved, (3) simplified, and (4) supervised by local expertise instead of general experts.Procedure Negligence in Coastal Cargo: What Can Be Done to Reduce the Gap between Formal and Informal Aspects of Safety?publishedVersio
Statlig plan i vegsektoren – intensjoner og realiteter
No full textThis article is motivated by two observations. First, we have noted an expressed political desire to use government plans more frequently, which would, among other things, streamline the planning process for road construction. In its policy platform 2013, the Solberg government states that the planning time for large-scale transport projects should be halved. Second, we note that in contrast to these political goals, government plans have rarely been used, both historically as well as in recent years. We interviewed key representatives of the country's five road regions in spring 2016. They were not very supportive of the idea of frequent use of government plans, and did not give the efficiency argument much weight. They pointed out that there are many other matters that are more important, such as local decision-making authority. They also claimed that things should take time.submittedVersio
Rolling out the red (and green) carpet: supporting driver decision making in automation-to-manual transitions
Get PDFThis paper assessed four types of human-machine interfaces (HMIs), classified according to the stages of automation proposed by Parasuraman et al. [“A model for types and levels of human interaction with automation,” IEEE Trans. Syst. Man, Cybern. A, Syst. Humans, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 286-297, May 2000]. We hypothesized that drivers would implement decisions (lane changing or braking) faster and more correctly when receiving support at a higher automation stage during transitions from conditionally automated driving to manual driving. In total, 25 participants with a mean age of 25.7 years (range 19-36 years) drove four trials in a driving simulator, experiencing four HMIs having the following different stages of automation: baseline (information acquisition-low), sphere (information acquisition-high), carpet (information analysis), and arrow (decision selection), presented as visual overlays on the surroundings. The HMIs provided information during two scenarios, namely a lane change and a braking scenario. Results showed that the HMIs did not significantly affect the drivers' initial reaction to the take-over request. Improvements were found, however, in the decision-making process: When drivers experienced the carpet or arrow interface, an improvement in correct decisions (i.e., to brake or change lane) occurred. It is concluded that visual HMIs can assist drivers in making a correct braking or lane change maneuver in a take-over scenario. Future research could be directed toward misuse, disuse, errors of omission, and errors of commission.submittedVersio
An analysis of official road crash cost estimates in European countries
Get PDFThis paper gives an overview of official monetary valuations of the prevention of road crashes, road fatalities and injuries in 31 European countries. The values have been made comparable by converting them to Euro in 2015-values, adjusted by purchasing power parities. The monetary valuation of preventing a fatality varies from 0.7 to 3.0 million Euro. The valuation of preventing a serious injury ranges from 2.5% to 34.0% of the value per fatality and the valuation of preventing a slight injury from 0.03% to 4.2% of the value of a fatality. Total costs of road crashes are equivalent to 0.4–4.1% of GDP. The method used for obtaining valuations has a major impact on values. Most countries rely on the willingness-to-pay (WTP) approach, which gives higher valuations than other methods. Additional explanations for variations in valuations are differences in the cost components included, different definitions of serious and slight injuries and different levels of underreporting. Harmonization of valuation practices is needed for making sound international comparisons of road crash costs and for cost-benefit analysis at supranational level.acceptedVersio
Competition and substitution between public transport modes
Get PDFThe management and understanding of modal split between public transport (PT) modes is of interest for numerous reasons. It may, for example, be desirable to stimulate passengers to switch from crowded buses and over to higher capacity rail. This requires a good understanding of drivers of transit modal substitution.
The evidence put forward in this paper is based on more than 150 empirically estimated cross elasticities between PT modes from over 20 sources collected from Australia, Europe and USA. These sources include scientifically published evidence as well as grey literature.
This evidence is coded into a database from which our paper presents and analyses the available cross-PT-modal demand relations. We focus on evidence for how fares, travel time and service intervals on PT ‘mode A’ affect the demand for PT ‘mode B’.
Despite generally low levels of substitution between PT modes, passengers are particularly sensitive to in-vehicle, access/egress and waiting time in choosing PT mode and less so for fare variations. In general, rail demand is less sensitive to changes in bus than bus demand is to changes in rail. We also find that peak-hour demand more markedly switches between PT modes than off-peak demand does.acceptedVersio
Economic Analysis and Investment Priorities in Sweden’s Transport Sector
Get PDFBeginning as a planning tool within Sweden’s national road administration some 50 years ago, benefit-cost analysis (BCA) has come to be a pillar of the national transport policy because of subsequent strategic choices made by the national parliament. These choices made it necessary to widen the analysis of costs to include also externalities and a foregone conclusion was that efficient investment priorities should be made based on BCA. But no one asked whether the political decision makers or the BCA models were up to that task. This paper reviews the institutional framework and practice of BCA in Sweden for transport infrastructure investment, and considers design issues that have been and still are debated, such as whether the discount rate should include a risk term and how to account for the marginal cost of public funds. A main concern with BCA results is the underestimation of construction costs, making transport sector projects look better than they are. Several ex post analyses have established that a higher NPV ratio increases the probability of being included in the investment program proposal prepared by the agency. The requirement to let projects undergo BCA seems to make planners “trim” project proposals by trying to reduce investment costs without significantly reducing benefits. This relationship is weaker among profitable projects. Moreover, there is no correlation between rate of return and the probability of being included in the final program, which is established on political grounds.acceptedVersio
How can the notion of optimal speed limits best be applied in urban areas?
Get PDFThis paper reviews estimates of optimal speed limits made in the past 30 years. A tendency is seen for optimal speed limits to become higher. In the most recent estimates made for Norway, the optimal speed limit was in no case lower than 60 km/h. Adopting a speed limit of 60 km/h on roads in urban areas now having speed limits of 30, 40 or 50 km/h would most likely lead to an increase in the number of accidents and killed or injured road users. It is a political objective in Norway to reduce the number of killed or injured road users and to encourage more walking and cycling. Raising speed limits would conflict with both these objectives. This paper discusses if a re-interpretation of the notion of optimal speed limits can applied to justify low speed limits in urban areas. Traditionally, analyses of optimal speed limits have included motorised travel only. It is shown by means of simple numerical examples, that by including the effects of motorised travel speed on walking and cycling, optimal speed limits tend to be lower than when only motorised travel is included.submittedVersio
Practices in-between: Norwegian long-term visitors in Mediterranean Spain
Get PDFDuring initial ethnographic fieldwork among Norwegian long-term visitors in the province of Alicante in Spain, these visitors expressed concern about the manner in which they were portrayed in the Norwegian news media, in contrast to their own images as holidaymakers. This problem is partly epistemological, since ‘long-term visitors’ were uncertain about their status and role. For instance, on sightseeing tours, sports events or hiking trips, they were tourists. At other times, for instance, when dealing with local authorities, they saw themselves as different from pure tourists. The Norwegian long-termers stated that their stay in Spain was far more multifaceted than what had been portrayed in the media, that they participated in cultural and social activities, and that they had many points of contact with Spanish society. The Norwegian visitors wondered how a more accurate and multivocal image of holidaymakers and long-termers could be represented. The concepts of local knowledge, adaptation and discourse will be used here to problematise this timely topic in tourism research on roles and images. Developing a more comprehensive view of long-term visitors will focus not only on their own situation, but also on their relations with other visitors, the host population, and Spanish authorities.Practices in-between: Norwegian long-term visitors in Mediterranean SpainpublishedVersio
Private and public willingness to pay for safety: A validity test
No full textHenrik Andersson, Elodie Levivier, Gunnar Lindberg, Private and public willingness to pay for safety: A validity test, Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 123, 2019, Pages 170-175, ISSN 0001-4575, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2018.11.022.Stated preference (SP) methods are often used to elicit an affected population’s preferences for, e.g., increased safety or better environmental quality. SP methods are based on hypothetical market scenarios which have advantages, since decision alternatives are known to the analysis, but also necessitate thorough validity tests of the results, since decisions are hypothetical. This study suggests a validity test based on theoretical predictions and empirical findings for private and public safety measures. According to the test, willingness to pay (WTP) for a public safety measure should exceed or be equal to the private one. Based on a rich data set eliciting both private and public WTP the results show that private WTP exceeds public WTP. Hence, the findings in this study highlight the importance of validity tests of preference estimates for safety, and suggest that WTP also for a private safety measure should be elicited in studies eliciting WTP for public safety measures, to allow for the validity test.Private and public willingness to pay for safety: A validity testacceptedVersio