Understanding the development of business travel policies: Reducing business travel, motivations and barriers

The main findings show the approaches and implications of these approaches to reduce carbon emissions and costs, improve productivity and the impact of ICT. The findings show the importance of external reporting through the Carbon Reduction Commitment, the Carbon Disclosure Project and corporate responsibility reports as a motivator to develop new policies. The paper goes on to outline how some factors can be both barriers and motivations for change, such as customers insisting on meeting their suppliers face-to-face, but also requiring information on carbon emissions as part of the Carbon Disclosure Project. Individuals can also be both a barrier and a motivator to change. The role of existing travel and meeting habits and the view of some that travelling is a perk linked to status symbols have proved to be a hard barriers to overcome. However, a technically literate younger generation used to communicating virtually have challenged these practices.