Tourism and mobility are the result of human behavior. Thus, research in this field deals with complex questions as decisions taken by travelers as well as the local population are a mixture of personal preferences, accessibility of alternatives as well as social and personal norms. Frequently researchers are confronted with a lack of data, describing the behavior of people or with methods to analyze data. The competence center aims at providing new theoretical and methodological contributions to understand better the behavior in tourism and mobility to improve the basis for the development of effective measures and management techniques.

A first project in this research area is focusing on cycling as a part of sustainable mobility in South Tyrol. It will develop a methodology to collect data from different sources to describe cyclists’ movement patterns. These data will be used to identify key factors for bicycle use in a mountain region and how to increase the share of cyclists among local population as well as tourists.