Impacts Of New Transportation Systems On Tourism Behavior: The Experience Of High-Speed Rail

New transit systems are viewed as an effective approach to dealing with concerns about automobile dependence and a degrading quality of life in many large cities. This paper concentrates on assessing tourists’ underlying characteristics and the changes in their transportation and lodging choices based on the introduction of Taiwan’s new high-speed rail system. The researchers conduct the multinomial logit model (MNL) in drawing the tourists’ characteristics, the elasticity and cross-elasticity, and the value of time of the tourists. The results indicate that many people still prefer their private cars although Taiwan’s new high-speed rail system has helped to alleviate some traffic issues. Overall, in-vehicle time appears to have had a comparative impact on travelers since high-speed rail began operating. This result reflects that tourists came to highly value their travel time after this new transit system became an option. Further, tourists were more sensitive to the changed travel costs following the introduction of high-speed rail. The results offer initial insight from a policy perspective that aim to control tourism transportation mode choices.