The potential role of employers in promoting sustainable mobility in rural areas: Evidence from Eastern Austria^*

* The authors wish to thank the European Regional Development Fund and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (BMLFUW) for funding of the project ”Eco-mobility in the Austro-Hungarian border region” (EMAH). We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. We would like to thank Thomas Macoun, Helmut Lemmerer, Takeru Shibayama, Andreas Havelka and Reinhard Jakits for their contributions in setting up and designing the study as well as in the data collection.

Figures & data

Figure 1. The geographic region of Burgenland and the locations of the participating employers marked with a star, S: Google Maps.

Table 1. Employer characteristics (source: site visits and interviews).

Employer	Sector	Sub-sector	Employees	Location	Distance to PT	Measures
1	Production	Construction	394	Attached	150 m	No
2	Service	Tourism	40	Attached	450 m	BRS
3	Service	Tourism	189	Detached	10 m	BRS
4	Production	Manufacturing	270	Detached	5.1 km	No
5	Service	Retail	1,390	Detached	1.6 km	SB, BRS

Table 2. Survey response rates.

Employer	Sample Size	Employees	Response Rate (in %)
1	49	394	12.44
2	7	40	17.50
3	145	189	76.72
4	103	270	38.15
5	62	1,390	4.46
Overall	366	2,283	16.03

Table 3. Socio-economic characteristics of the surveyed employees.

Gender		Education		Age
N = 293	%	N = 292	%	N = 292	%
Male	48.1	No Graduation	0.3	15–20	2.0
Female	51.9	Compulsory School	5.5	21–30	23.7
		Vocational Training	30.2	31–40	30.7
		High School	48.2	41–50	28.7
		University	15.8	51–60	13.5
				>60	1.4
Income(€ /Month)	%	PT Ticket		Car Availability
N = 294	%	N = 302	%	N = 298	%
<1,000	7.5	No Ticket	96.7	Always	90.3
1,001–1,500	24.1	Season Ticket	2.6	Sometimes	7.7
1,501–2,000	20.1	Reduced Fare Card	0.7	Never	2.0
2,001–3.000	26.5
>3,000	21.8

Table 4. Composition of the focus groups (f=female).

	Focus group 1	Focus group 2
	(Employer 4)	(Employer 5)
Participants (f)	8(2)	6(4)
Management	1	2
Employees	7	4

Table 5. Modal split during commute among the employees in percent.

	Employer					Overall
	1	2	3	4	5	%
Car	94.7 %	80.0 %	91.1 %	94.0 %	98.0 %	93.5 %
Car-pooling	1.8 %	0 %	6.2 %	2.4 %	2.0 %	3.6 %
Public Transport	0 %	0 %	0 %	0 %	0 %	0 %
Cycling	0 %	0 %	2.7 %	2.4 %	0 %	1.6 %
Walking	3.5 %	20 %	0 %	1.2 %	0 %	1.3 %
N	57	5	113	83	51	309

Table 6. Average (self-reported) distance in km by mode choice (f=female).

	Obs.	Av. Distance	Std. Dev.	Min.	Max.
Walking (f)	4(1)	1.33 km	0.58	1 km	2 km
Cycling (f)	6(3)	2.0 km	0.84	0.5 km	3 km
Car-pooling (f)	10(4)	59 km	31.77	16 km	120 km
Car (f)	289(144)	28.38 km	21.81	0.5 km	140 km

Table 7. Self-reported walking time (WT) from home to the closest public transport (PT) stop and distance between home and workplace.

WT to closest	Bus	Other modes	All modes	Distance between
PT stop	%	%	%	home and work	%
0–2 min	18.45	0.83	19.28	0 - 5 km	11.1
2–5 min	28.37	4.67	33.04	5 - 15 km	22.5
5–10 min	23.42	4.69	28.11	15 - 25 km	22.4
10–15 min	9.36	2.76	12.12	25 - 35 km	12.1
15–20 min	4.41	1.10	5.51	35 - 45 km	12.7
> 20 min	0.83	1.11	1.94	> 45 km	19.2
N = 363	84.84	15.16	100.0	N = 307	100.0