Hypermobility (travel)

Hypermobile travelers are “highly mobile individuals” who take “frequent trips, often over great distances.” They “account for a large share of the overall kilometres travelled, especially by air.”[1] These people contribute significantly to the overall amount of airmiles flown within a given society.[2]

Although concerns over hypermobility apply to several modes of transport, the environmental impact of aviation and especially its greenhouse gas emissions have brought particular focus on flying.[3][4] Among the reasons for this focus is that these emissions, because they are made at high altitude, have a climate impact that is commonly estimated to be 2.7 higher than the same emissions if made at ground-level.[5]

Although the amount of time people have spent in motion has remained constant since 1950, the shift from feet and bicycles to cars and planes has increased the speed of travel fivefold.[6] This results in the twin effects of wider and shallower regions of social activity around each person (further exacerbated by electronic communication which can be seen as a form of virtual mobility), and a degradation of the social and physical environment brought about by the high speed traffic (as theorised by urban designer Donald Appleyard).

The changes are brought about locally due to the use of cars and motorways, and internationally by aeroplanes. Some of the social threats of hypermobility include:[7]

  • more polarisation between rich and poor
  • reduced health and fitness

The addictive properties of hypermobile travel have been noted by researchers.[8][9][10][11][12]

Widespread Internet use is seen as a contributory factor towards hypermobility due to the increased ease which it enables travel to be desired and organized.[13] To the extent that the Internet stimulates travel, it represents a lost opportunity to reduce overall emissions because online communication is a straightforward substitute for physical travel.[14]

The term hypermobility arose around 1980 concerning the flow of capital,[15] and since the early 1990s has also referred to excessive travel. [See: Hepworth and Ducatel (1992);[16] Whitelegg (1993);[17] Lowe (1994);[18] van der Stoep (1995);[19] Shields (1996);[20] Cox (1997);[21] Adams (1999);[22] Khisty and Zeitler (2001);[23] Gössling et al. (2009);[1] Mander & Randles (2009);[24] and (Higham 2014).[8]] The term is widely credited as having been coined by Adams (1999), but apart from the title of the work it says nothing explicit about it except that “[t]he term hypermobility is used in this essay to suggest that it may be possible to have too much of a good thing.”[1][22]


  1. ^ Jump up to:ab c Gössling S, Ceron JP, Dubois G, Hall CM, Gössling S, Upham P, Earthscan L (2009). Hypermobile travellers. and Implications for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction. In: Climate Change and Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions, London. The chapter: “Archived copy” (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 19, 2010. Retrieved May 24, 2011.. The book: [1]
  2. ^Høyer, K. G. and Næss, P. (2001). Sustainable Tourismர or Sustainable Mobility? The Norwegian Case. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 8, 147-160. [2]
  3. ^Anderson K, Bows A (2008). Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (366:1882, p.3863-3882). [3]
  4. ^Anderson K (2008). (Presentation slides): Reframing climate change: from long-term targets to emission pathways. [4]
  5. ^Peeters, P. & Williams, V. 2009. Calculating emissions and radiative forcing. P.76 in: Gössling, S. & Upham, P (Eds.), 2009. Climate change and aviation: Issues, challenges and solutions.
  6. ^John Adams (19 January 2000). “Proceedings from the Ottawa Workshop – OECD”(PDF). p. 118.
  7. ^“Hypermobility: The road to ruin”. BBC. 11 December 1999.
  8. ^ Jump up to:ab Higham J.E.S., Cohen S.A., Cavaliere C.T. (2014). Climate Change, Discretionary Air Travel, and the “Flyers’ Dilemma”. Journal of Travel Research. 53:4:pp.462-475.
  9. ^Ram Y., Nawijn J., Peeters P.M. (2013). Happiness and limits to sustainable tourism mobility: a new conceptual model. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 21:7:pp.1017-1035.
  10. ^Cohen S., Higham J., Cavaliere C. (2011). Binge flying: Behavioural addiction and climate change. Annals of Tourism Research.
  11. ^Cohen S.A., Higham J.E. (2011). Eyes wide shut? UK consumer perceptions on aviation climate impacts and travel decisions to New Zealand. Current Issues in Tourism. 14:4:pp.323-335.
  12. ^Jenkins S. (2009). Hypermobility is now the opium of the people, an obsession that wrecks communities and planet. The Guardian. 22 Dec. 2009.
  13. ^“Gridlock? Blame the net”. BBC. 21 November 2001.
  14. ^Monbiot, George (2012-09-28). “The case for expanding UK airports is based on fallacy”. The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2012-09-28. Business travel, by contrast to popular perceptions, is not rising, but falling – and falling dramatically. (…) companies have begun, at last, to use the excellent technological alternatives to face-to-face international meetings.
  15. ^Damette F (1980). The regional framework of monopoly exploitation: new problems and trends. Regions in Crisis: New Perspectives in European Regional Theory (p.76-92).
  16. ^Hepworth ME, Ducatel K (1992). Transport in the information age: Wheels and wires. ISBN 1-85293-220-1.
  17. ^Whitelegg J, Holzafel H, Whitelegg J (1993). Transport for a sustainable future: the case for Europe. ISBN 1-85293-145-0.
  18. ^Lowe MD (1994). The global rail revival. Society (31:5, p.51-56). [5]
  19. ^van der Stoep J (1995). Hypermobility as a Challenge for Systems Thinking and Government Policy. Proceedings 39th Annual Meeting International Society for the Systems Sciences, Louisville (p.402-411).
  20. ^Shields R (1996). Flow as a new paradigm. Space and Culture (1:1, p.1-7). [6]Archived 2013-07-23 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ^Cox KR (1997). Spaces of globalization: reasserting the power of the local. The Guilford Press, New York.
  22. ^ Jump up to:ab Adams J (1999). The social implications of hypermobility. OECD Env. Directorate, Unclassified ENV/EPOC/PPC/T (99) 3/FINAL/REV1 (; p.95). [7]
  23. ^Khisty CJ, Zeitler U (2001). Is Hypermobility a Challenge for Transport Ethics and Systemicity? Systemic Practice and Action Research (14:5, p.597-613).
  24. ^Mander S, Randles S (2009). Aviation Coalitions: Drivers of Growth and Implications for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction. In: Climate Change and Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions (ISBN 9781844076208), Earthscan, London.


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