Green on the road: An analysis of sustainable commuting

Abstract

The problem of global warming due to excess greenhouse gas emissions has been a major concern in the past decades, in which transport plays a crucial role. A significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions comes from commuting; employees travelling from their house to their work location. This research explored to what extent the management of an organisation considers it necessary that commuting takes place in a sustainable way and whether the management takes any action upon this. The research also examined sustainable commuting when it comes to determining a new workplace location for an organisation. The theoretical foundation of this research is Discourse Analysis and the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. The results show that managers are concerned in a certain way about the CO2 emissions of commuting. These concerns are dominated by two discourses: the individualistic and the systemic. Next, the results show a wide range of actions managers take to commute sustainably. To capture the actions managers perform the concepts of eco-efficiency, eco-effectiveness, socio-efficiency, and socio-effectiveness were linked. In addition, the results show that (re)locating the workplace location to a location nearby a train station is a trend in the mobility field and can be interpreted as a movement towards sustainable commuting.