Motivations for routine physical personal mobilities

This chapter attempts to expose the differences between movement and travel, as the most basic components of physical personal mobility. It further attempts to elaborate on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for both movement and travel. Movement is presented as referring specifically to short distances of human changes to their bodily positions, alongside its wider meaning for the human need to move in general. Travel is shown to constitute the ‘second floor’ for movements, constituting more extended trips over the rather shorter movements, being carried out normally through some form of transportation technology. Movement is argued to constitute both a basic need and an ability of humans, motivated intrinsically by the needs for food, water, and fresh air, as well as by the extrinsic needs for locomotion to things, proximity to people, and curiosity for information. Travel is argued to be intrinsically motivated by a rather wide variety of autotelic, hedonic, and experiential motivations, along with extrinsic motivations consisting of attractions to people, places, and events, at a variety of destinations, or reflecting differing activities (instrumental, utilitarian, and functional). Each of these general motivation sets is further accompanied by some specifically designated motivations per any designated travel. It is suggested that the division of trips and their motivations into origin, travel, and destination is mostly analytical, whereas, for the travelers themselves, the very process of traveling is normally viewed as a rather single and unified activity, with its motivations frequently concealed.