Reducing CO2e emissions from museum and garden visitor travel

GLAM welcome more than 3,500,00  visitors each year. GLAM intends to develop a comprehensive strategy for reducing visitor travel emissions but it is not clear which visitors – to which venue, by which social groups, from which residential locations – generate the most travel-related emissions, even though they have comprehensive multi-year datasets on visitor numbers and profiles.

 The TSU will collaborate with GLAM to identify carbon-intensive visitor travel segments. The segments will be defined based on a combinations of travel behaviour (e.g., transport mode, distance travelled, travel party), GLAM venue, socio-demographic background (e.g., gender, age) and residential location.  The project has three specific objectives:

1. To construct visitor travel segments from data analysis of differences in travel behaviour, and associated CO2 emissions to/from different GLAM venues according to visitors’ socio-demographic characteristics and residential location
2. To identify the share of different segments in GLAM’s total visitor travel emissions
3. To co-develop, with GLAM and wider University stakeholders, realistic proposals to induce travel behaviour change among key visitor travel segments

The data will be realised using advanced statistical analysis on visitors’ socio-demographic background, residential location,  and travel behaviour, as well as additional data on total visitor numbers by individual GLAM venue. This work will be carried out by Research Assistant Emily Sissons, and doctoral students Shiv Yusel, and Zhaoqui Zhou. The team will organise two workshops in which staff from GLAM, the Environmental Sustainability Team and the TSU will co-design realistic plans to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage behaviour change among selected visitor travel segments. As the museum sector at large starts to understand the role they can play in encouraging and supporting visitor behaviour change towards low-carbon mobility, the team hope that this project can share valuable insights and lessons about the essence of effective interventions for the heritage sector. The workshops will be designed and led by Tim Schwanen and the TSU’s Knowledge Exchange Officer, Dr Francesca Richards. “