Leisure travel in a historical perspective: Changes in the structures of time and space use

Abstract

Leisure activities play a more and more dominant role in our daily lives and their importance has increased steadily over the last 40 years compared to other activities. Considering leisure travel, one would expect to discover this trend in recent empirical work. Unfortunately, this has not been possible in Germany or other countries due to lack of suitable data. The lack of suitable data is mainly caused by the fact that different leisure activities are performed very sporadically and are influenced by changing conditions like weather, traffic conditions etc. It is thus desirable to obtain data over periods substantially longer than one or even several days (longitudinal data). Two surveys are analysed here (Mobidrive and Uppsala) which are unique concerning their observation period duration. They allow to compare intrapersonal behaviour at two different points in time (i.e. 1971 and 1999). Regardless of methodological problems, a comparison provides at least first hints about which changes occurred over almost 30 years and which trends exist in leisure travel.