LONDON (VIP-NEWS) — Despite efforts by U.K. festival organisers in recent years to "green" their events, more than two-thirds of festival-goers still travel by car — and most of those are in vehicles containing only one or two people.
That statistic emerges in a new study, "Jam Packed Part 1: Audience Travel Emissions from Festivals," commissioned by U.K. music industry environmental group Julie's Bicycle. The study is the first half of a report intended to focus attention on lowering travel emissions in the music industry, focusing on travel to and from music festivals.
The report identifies audience travel behavior, audience travel incentives, carbon responsibility for travel emissions, travel initiatives reducing emissions, barriers to changing audience travel behavior and suggested effective measures by organizers for reducing travel emissions.
Among the findings was that 72% of people going to "greenfield" events and 68% going to those within "reasonable proximity" to a city or town travelled by car and 60% of those travelling by car have two or less people in each vehicle.
The report contains various recommendations to reduce carbon emissions. They include building focused partnerships between organizers, travel operators and local authorities, developing online information resources and supporting leisure travel innovations such as incentive schemes.
The study was conducted over the summer of 2008, using data collected at 14 festivals in the U.K. and Ireland with attendances of 20,000 and over. It was delivered in partnership with De Montfort University, the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Surrey University and a team of volunteers from Bucks New University, plus promoters Festival Republic and Live Nation. According to Billboard
