Mid Sweden University

This thesis is concerned with the study of sustainable mobility in rural tourism areas. In particular, it aims to: i) contribute to a better understanding of the transport challenges faced by rural tourism areas; and ii) explore how to plan for sustainable mobility in such places. The overarching research question that has guided this investigation is as follows: How can rural tourism regions promote sustainable mobility? To achieve the aim of this thesis, two main aspects of sustainable mobility are addressed. Firstly, by incorporating perspectives from various stakeholder groups, including tourists, residents, second-home owners and practitioners involved in transport planning, the study seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of transportation challenges and the travel practices of the various groups. Secondly, the thesis explores how Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) – a rarely-used participatory land use planning method in tourism studies - can aid in sustainable mobility planning. The thesis draws from several concepts and a theory. The concepts include monomodalism, car dependency, wicked problems, (un)desirable transport futures, automobility and public participation in planning processes. The theory is that of social representation. The thesis is based on a case study approach, focusing on four selected locations in Sweden: Sälen; Malung-Sälen; Älvdalen; and Åre. These locations are prominent rural tourism regions that face significant transport-related challenges for which they seek to implement sustainable solutions. A mixed-methods approach is employed, integrating both qualitative and quantitative techniques to address the objectives outlined in the five papers that make up the thesis. The findings of the thesis collectively show that the main challenge to sustainable mobility in rural tourism regions is one that can be termed a crisis of uncontested poly-challenges. In other words, these regions simultaneously face a conundrum of transport challenges, including the hegemony of the private car coupled with poor public transport services as well as a shortage of policy frameworks for developing sustainable mobility. In addition, the regions included in this study have historically been marginalised when it comes to transport planning research and policy, a situation which further exacerbates their peripheral position with regard to promoting sustainable mobility. This thesis makes a theoretical contribution to the fields of tourism and transport research. It does so by applying contemporary concepts in sustainability discussions and social representation theory to inform our understanding of transport challenges. Furthermore, by investigating the potential of the PPGIS method as a tool for sustainable rural mobility planning and how to design effective PPGIS studies for such planning, this thesis makes a methodological and practical contribution to the fields.

Automobile dependence and its externalities pose significant sustainability issues in both urban and rural areas. However, the existing literature mainly focuses on cities, with limited evidence from cases in the countryside. Travelling in rural areas requires attention, as most tourists rely on private cars to travel to and within these places. Also, cars are still widely accepted as "the rural transport solution", which hinders the transition to more sustainable transport systems. In this paper I present empirical evidence on the extent to which domestic tourists depend on their cars for travel to and within S & auml;len, a rural destination in Sweden. According to a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) survey conducted among tourists in S & auml;len, 89% of visitors travelled to the destination by car, while none of them used collective transport. Moreover, interviews conducted with stakeholders involved in transport planning and management in S & auml;len have revealed challenges in providing alternative mobility options, such as public transport, to the destination. Furthermore, even though the destination offers a ski bus transport system for trips within the destination, the survey results indicate that most tourists still prefer to travel by private car within S & auml;len. The use of private cars for tourist travel has resulted in externalities, particularly congestion during peak times. This view is shared by stakeholders and supported by the results of the tourist survey. These findings have implications for rural (tourism) policy, as they show that developing alternative mobility infrastructure is not enough to shift tourists' automobile dependency in rural areas.

This chapter discusses mixed methods Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) in tourism. It provides the rationale for using mixed methods PPGIS in tourism and discusses the context where it was used. The context was a study exploring the opportunities and challenges of PPGIS (henceforth the PPGIS study) for transport planning at a tourism destination. PPGIS is a participatory research method that uses the mapping and technological capabilities of GIS to leverage community knowledge, enhance local decision-making processes, and improve the community members’ lives. PPGIS is very similar to mental mapping; both methods use maps to capture people's cognitive representations of a given space. However, in mental mapping, participation is aimed at fulfilling research objectives, but in PPGIS, participation should ideally empower communities. The PPGIS study for this chapter employed a concurrent triangulation mixed method approach. The study used qualitative and quantitative techniques to overcome the inherent challenges of using a single method and to corroborate the findings. Equal weighting was given in the design of quantitative (survey) and qualitative (open-ended, mapping) questions and the eventual data collection, analysis, and interpretation. This chapter discusses how the aim of the PPGIS study was formulated, the sampling and data collection processes, and how the data was analysed. It also discusses the opportunities and challenges of conducting tourism research using mixed methods PPGIS.

Understanding transport challenges is inevitable for transitioning to a low-carbon rural tourism future. Using social representation theory, this study examines how tourism and transport practitioners perceive transport challenges in rural destinations and how they overcome these problems. The multi-method qualitative approach adopted involves semi-structured interviews with practitioners, participant observation, and document analysis in the Swedish destinations of Åre and Sälen. Findings reveal social representations of transport challenges at both destinations, namely, “a car-dependent society”, a “non-desirable transport future” and “wicked transport problems”. Practitioners in these places address these challenges in several ways. Surprisingly, one solution is to promote flying to the destinations. This particular solution, not to mention the destinations' overreliance on private automobile use illustrates that they have not yet begun transitioning to a low carbon transport future. This situation highlights the urgency to encourage sustainable mobility development to and within these destinations.

Transportation sharing (e.g., car-sharing, freight-sharing, car-pooling, ridesharing) has received a lot of interest over the years. Despite the continued growth in transportation sharing, its potential in rural areas has not been fully explored. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review of the literature on sharing and transportation, particularly in rural areas. Based on findings from the literature, technological advancements, economic prospects, convenience, perceived environmental protection, the possibility to socialise, and avoidance of car ownership are some factors that have facilitated the growth of transportation sharing. Potential barriers to transportation-sharing in rural areas include poor regulation, poor network coverage and low, inconsistent demand due to few sprawled-out rural residents. Sharing in transportation has a great potential to provide sustainable solutions to transportation challenges in rural areas, as residents and visitors to these places overwhelmingly depend on car travel. Accordingly, transportation sharing could potentially reduce congestion, especially if car travel is combined with other modes (e.g., autonomous vehicles). 

The purpose of this paper is to showcase how Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) can be used to assist in collecting data of relevance for planning at a tourism destination in general and, specifically how PPGIS data can assist in the early stages of transportation planning. In this paper, we report on a PPGIS study in Sälenfjällen, the largest ski tourism destination in Sweden. Our analysis uses data from 162 visitors sampled on-site using online and paper-based questionnaires containing survey questions and mapping tasks. We use the survey and mapped results from Sälenfjällen to discuss the opportunities and challenges of using PGGIS for this planning purpose. We conclude that, despite of various challenges like low response rates and sampling issues, PPGIS provides the possibility to collect rich information in terms of survey results and mapped values. This is important in understanding a transportation challenge at the early stages of planning, namely the initiation stage. Our study adds to a growing literature exploring the use of PPGIS in the field of tourism and recreation. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first to use this approach in a tourism-transport context in a Nordic destination.

In this paper, we address the social dimension of tourism transportation through the lens of social representation theory. Travel is a social and cultural phenomenon, and the social and cultural assumptions that underlie reported attitudes to tourism transport and related planning have barely been investigated. In this paper, we explore the multiplicity of social realities that underpin our attitudes towards transport, tourism, and subsequent planning. Our study is based on semi-structured interviews with stakeholders at two tourism destinations in Sweden. Results from our thematic analysis of the stakeholder perspectives reveal multiple values embedded in the hegemonic, emancipated, and polemical social representations. Our study challenges traditional views on tourism transportation and related planning that have so far been dominated by over-reliance on objective data and measures that predict peoples' attitudes towards transportation. We conclude that whilst mechanistic approaches to tourism transportation and related planning are key engineering solutions, they cannot be used in their entirety to address transportation issues at tourism destinations. This is because, in a tourism context, there are various stakeholders (e.g., residents, tourists, tourism business owners, and government representatives) with multiple perspectives that should be considered in the planning and management of transportation. We thus call for more studies exploring the multiple perspectives related to tourism transportation and planning in various tourism contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze visitor's mobility perception using data collected by the PPGIS method and discuss how it can be used in planning at a tourism destination. Traditionally, planning has been expert-based dominated by rational thinking and less involvement of the public. However, expert-based planning has been criticised as being an elite process excluding the view of the majority. Thus, deliberate efforts have since been made to broaden public engagement in policymaking, empowerment, and decision-making processes. For example, town hall meetings where the public gives their opinion to inform public planning. Nevertheless, methods that require the physical presence of participants and possible active engagement are often perceived as demanding. The past decades' development in technology has opened the possibility for using digital tools such as Public participation GIS (PPGIS). PPGIS is the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to broaden public engagement in planning and management practices. 

Thus, this PPGIS study was done in collaboration with stakeholders in Sälenfjällen, the largest ski tourism destination in Sweden.  Findings from the study indicate PPGIS as an effective way of getting spatially explicit data to inform better decision-making in destination management and planning. However, there are still challenges in areas like data collection, sampling, and quality of the data gathered from the public and its use in planning. The study adds to a growing literature exploring the use of PPGIS in the field of tourism and recreation (e.g., Brown and Weber, 2013; Wolf et al., 2018; Munro et al., 2020) and is to our knowledge among the first to use it in a tourism-transport context in a Nordic case study.   

The purpose of this paper is to discuss challenges and opportunities in using Public participation GIS (PPGIS) in planning at a tourism destination located in a rural context. The past decades' development in technology has opened the possibility for using digital tools such as PPGIS. PPGIS is the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to broaden public engagement in planning and management practices. PPGIS usage in various planning contexts is well documented, however more research is needed on PPGIS usability for planning at tourism destinations located in remote areas of developed countries. This paper uses two case areas with similar characteristics, Sälenfjällen, Sweden, and Kymenlaakso, Finland to contrast and compare the PPGIS use in addressing mobility challenges, respectively. Both Sälenfjällen and Kymenlaakso share a key feature for being prominent tourist destinations located in remote areas that experience mobility challenges. For the destinations to develop sustainably, the mobility issues ought to be addressed for instance through planning conducted to ensure the development of tourism that includes wider societal, economic, and environmental goals. In both studies, the PPGIS method was implemented through surveys shared to visitors where the aim was to collect their perceptions on transport and mobility challenges that could inform destination management and planning.  Findings from the studies indicate that the PPGIS adds to the planning process by improving the collection of spatially explicit data. However, there are still challenges in areas like data collection, sampling, and quality of the data gathered from the public and its implementation in planning. The study adds to a growing literature exploring the use of PPGIS in the field of tourism and recreation and is to our knowledge among the first to use it in a comparative tourism-transport context in the Nordic peripheries.