Suchergebnisse

Some confusion seems to have developed over the relationship between accessibility and travel patterns. Various concepts of attraction, accessibility, and potential are examined with the object of reaching a more satisfactory definition. Multivariate analysis of data relating to an urban area suggests that the influences of conventional accessibility indices are concealed by collinear socioeconomic variations; when these are separated there is a more pronounced relationship. It is shown that such a relationship has important consequences for urban planning.

The nature of leisure travel is examined and a new approach to demand modelling is suggested that incorporates attraction and accessibility factors into a disaggregated trip generation model which is mode specific. Some experimental empirical estimation of a version of the model yields worthwhile results, and suggests lines for further research and development.

Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses have become widely used tools for the justification of leisure-related expenditures, but are based on a number of inadequate assumptions. The narrow conceptualisations both of outputs and of inputs, and an oversimplified production function linking them are the main problems. Participation is usually assumed to provide an adequate measure of output or benefit accruing to the participant, but it is a measure neither of demand nor of supply, and it ignores the individual-level production that is so characteristic of services. Inputs have previously been equated with resources, to the neglect of nonresource influences on output. An alternative 'production of welfare' approach is described, and its implications for cost-benefit evaluations—and for efficiency studies generally—are examined.