Why do tourists use public transport in Korea? The roles of artificial intelligence knowledge, environmental, social, and governance, and sustainability

ABSTRACT

The study of public transport and tourism, especially domestic tourism, is relatively under-researched, particularly in relation to emerging transport technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and environmental, social, and governance (ESG). To bridge this gap, an integrated research model is created and tested with ESG, air quality, climate change, and AI, applying multi-analysis methods of partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), multi-group analysis (MGA), and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) in an Asian context. The three methods provide a well-rounded perspective of the factors that influence tourists’ public transport use. Symmetric methods of SEM and MGA identifies key variables and their relationships, while the fsQCA reveals complex combinations of conditions. Results reveal that environmental and social ESG as well as climate change mitigation and sustainable mobility are significant for use of public transport by domestic tourists. High and low AI knowledge groups also have distinctive public transport use characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• Public transport
• artificial intelligence
• environmental, social, and governance
• sustainability
• domestic tourism
• fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Mr. Kijoon Jin for his dedicated help in managing this grant project. This work was supported by a grant from Kyung Hee University in 2022 (KHU-20220778).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Kyung Hee University: [Grant Number KHU-20220778].