The influence of new road infrastructure on tourism behaviour in Taiwan: the Sun Moon Lake experience

摘要

The construction of transport infrastructure has a considerable impact on regional development. This study examines the behaviour of tourists following theopeningofanew freeway to Taiwan's Sun Moon Lake scenic area, including changes to the number of trips, duration of overnight visits, and other areas visited on the same trip. Given that these three types of behaviours are all count data, univariate Poisson lognormal models are used to analyse each of the three tourist behaviours, and then bivariate and multivariate Poisson lognormal models are implemented to examine the interactions between the three tourist behavioural responses. The model results indicate that the age of a tourist, the presence of children, place of residence, mode of transport and travel time have a significant impact on travel behaviour following the opening of the freeway.