Online shopping opportunities are transforming travel behaviour for shopping and could potentially reduce the overall travel demand. Despite numerous studies on online shopping, only a few have taken an approach that includes trips for all travel purposes. Based on a web–survey, this paper provides results on travel behaviour for physical shopping for frequent, regular, and infrequent online shoppers in Sweden. The results indicate that frequent online shoppers make as many car trips (for both shopping and other errands) as others. Also, frequent online shoppers in total make as many trips to a physical store as infrequent online shoppers – although by more sustainable modes of transport – and that the time saved from online shopping is spent on both additional shopping trips and trips for other errands. The conclusion is that online shopping might facilitate changing travel behaviour but does not in itself represent a good stand–alone measure for reducing vehicle mileage.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rapid change in travel behavior for different types of trips, including everyday social and recreational leisure trips. People have used adaptive travel behaviors to cope with the new circumstances for activities and transport. Due to the Swedish strategy focusing on more voluntary restrictions, people have had reason to consider which trips and activities to skip and which to keep. The overall aim of the study is to explore and deepen the knowledge about adaptive behaviors used and seek to understand its possible implications for future travel behavior change towards sustainable mobility through the use of qualitative interviews focusing on everyday leisure trips. The results illustrate how people have used a range of adaptive behaviors to cope with the implications of the pandemic, with cancellation and change of transport mode being the ones most reflected upon by the interviewees. Further, the results reveal how the overall label “everyday leisure trips” in fact includes a variety of trip purposes that differ in terms of flexibility and importance and must thus be approached in different ways in transport policy measures.
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