ICT and accessibility: Research synthesis and future perspectives

Numerous studies have been conducted on the impact of various forms of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on activity patterns and travel demand, and many impacts have been widely recognized since the early 1970s (e.g., see Mokhtarian et al., 2006; Aguiléra et al., 2012; van Wee et al., forthcoming, for overviews of literature). Research on ICT and travel behaviour is receiving increased attention, as reflected by special issues of Transportation Research Part A (see Kwan et al., 2007) and the Journal of Transport Geography (Lyons, 2009). The principal research concern, particularly in the field of transport economics, is still the opposition between complementarity or even generation effects and substitution effects: do ICTs stimulate or reduce travel demand? (Aguiléra et al., 2012). The answer is still fairly unclear, even though the idea of complementarity or generation dominates (Mokhtarian, 2009). In contrast to literature on the impact of ICT on travel and activity behaviour, literature on the impact of different forms of ICT on accessibility is relatively scarce. Job accessibility is probably still the most frequently researched topic in the area of ICT and accessibility. Examples include Muhammad et al. (2008) who developed potential accessibility models that integrate job accessibility in virtual and physical space, and Shaw and Yu (2009) who extended a space–time geographic approach of individual activities by including the virtual space. Several review articles on accessibility measures have been published before (see section 3.2), but to our knowledge a comprehensive overview of the impact of ICT on accessibility does not exist yet. This chapter aims to fill this gap and provide a systematic overview of potential impacts of ICT on accessibility, using the four components of accessibility as distinguished by Geurs and van Wee (2004), that is, the land-use, transport, temporal and individual components. Furthermore we address the gaps in the literature relating to the impact of ICT on travel behaviour and accessibility.1 Note that we focus on passenger transport and exclude ICT’s impact on goods transport and access to ICT.