Towards green mobility practices in academia? Assessing policy options for universities to reduce emissions from academic air travel

This paper focuses on higher education institutions as change agents in the decarbonisation of research practices and asks how they can reduce emissions from air travel in academia. More specifically, it explores what university policies and policy packages to achieve such emissions reductions are perceived as suitable by academic staff and university management. Empirically, we focus on universities in Austria, where a number of universities have started to introduce policies to reduce emissions from air travel in recent years. We conducted a survey among academic staff at three Austrian universities (N = 758) and a policy Delphi among key policy actors at six Austrian universities. We find that both staff and policy actors assess such policies in terms of three main criteria: effectiveness, viability and fairness & responsibility. For short haul flights, a policy package encompassing cost-coverage for premium rail tickets and mandating ground-based travel for certain destinations is widely considered effective, viable and fair. Developing a policy package that addresses emissions from long-haul flights is a much greater challenge, as trade-offs between effectiveness and viability are felt much more strongly here. Nevertheless, our results indicate that a combination of further support for videoconferencing and a university-internal climate levy on flights could constitute a decisive step in the right direction.