A number of thoughts came to mind as I read about the release of the 'Propensity to Fly' report yesterday, which discusses British people's unwillingness to fly less due to climate change.
1. 'Flying less' is not like 'recycling' or 'reducing heat use at home'
As far as I am aware, there is no lobbying group, or politician that advocates that the public should recycle less, or use more heat in their home. Yet, the commercial airline organization ATAG tells us that we do not need to fly less, Boris Johnson supports flying in favour of telepresence - and even the climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, appears unwilling to target emissions in this sector. Each of these groups are telling the public that climate change can be tackled by means other than not flying.
Nor are there advertising/marketing campaigns to encourage people to fly-tip their old TVs or help the gas companies by consuming more fuel at home. In contrast, their is a vast amount of advertising which attracts people to fly. Bottom line, I am not surprised that this report indicates that people are less willing to give up on flying than other high carbon/unenvironmental activities.
2. Diagnosing society
Beyond the overall findings, I would be interested in further analysis about how climate change is altering people's flying habits in the UK. On this topic, it is very important to be wary of confounding variables - and to control for them. Specific ones which we have worked on (particularly in the US business flying market in relation to telepresence) are to do with income, region, party affiliation, reason/distance for travel and attitudes towards climate change. In general, there is a very strong correlation between people's income and how much they fly (see chart attached), and people in the London area now have a greener alternative to short-haul flights in Eurostar than people from other parts of the UK. Unless your statistical model can isolate each variable, one can come to potentially false conclusions (recycling is associated with people flying more etc.).
3. English Climate Citizens fly fewer short-haul leisure flights than other groups
A particular important category of flying for English people is short-haul leisure flights. Since these are leisure flights, they can be considered 'discretionary' for the individual, and short-haul more easily allows for 'alternative means of transport'. According to our Environmental Choices survey, 47% of flights English people take are short-haul leisure flights, compared to 24% of flights Canadians take and 27% of flights Americans take. Those who are most concerned about climate change, Climate Citizens, representing 31% of English adults, make, on average, significantly fewer short-haul leisure flights (1.21 round trips pa; n=321) than other English adults (1.67 round trips pa; n=685) (p = 0.033, equal variances not assumed).
