An overwhelming majority of survey respondents at a leading research university agree that Air travel contributes to global warming, but many - especially professors and doctoral students - still often fly to conferences, according to a study 1, which last month inGlobal Environmental Changewas published 1.

Flying is one of the most emissions-intensive activities people undertake. A study from 2021 2found that aviation was responsible for about 4% of human-caused global warming. Another analysis found that in 2013 the top 10% of frequent flyers were estimated 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from air travel made up. Researchers believe that institutions and conference organizers Adopt alternatives to reduce the carbon footprint of the scientific community.

“We fly a lot, and we say we shouldn't do that,” says Jonas De Vos, a transport geographer at University College London (UCL) and the lead author of the latest study. “We are hypocrites.”

Into the skies

De Vos and his colleagues used social media and UCL newsletters to send a survey to all staff and students at the university. Participants completed a questionnaire about their travel habits and indicated how much they agreed with a series of 17 statements about attending conferences. The team analyzed responses from 1,116 graduate students and staff who conduct research, teaching, or both, and sorted them into clusters based on their attitudes toward academic travel.

More than 80% of participants agreed that air travel is bad for the environment, but in 2022 over 35% of respondents flew to at least one meeting. The largest cluster, with 294 respondents, are the “involuntary flyers,” which means that they like to travel by train, but often fly to conferences. The authors also found that professors and graduate students prefer in-person events and frequently fly to international meetings. Teaching and research staff tend to travel less frequently and usually by train to nearby destinations; this also applies to female respondents as a group.

“It's the first time that this gap between attitudes and behavior has been addressed in such a direct way,” says Sebastian Jäckle, a political scientist at the University of Freiburg in Germany, who once rode his bike to a conference in Poland. In order to obtain a more representative sample, he suggests conducting surveys at additional universities.

Although the survey didn't ask participants why they fly to conferences, De Vos says researchers often have a "fear of missing out" when it comes to presenting their research and Networks with potential collaborations to build. “International mobility is often still important for promotions and obtaining funding for research grants,” he adds.

Powered by kerosene

International in-person conferences continue to run largely on fossil fuels. The 2017 meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, for example, drew more than 20,000 scientists to Chicago, Illinois, and produced at least 39,500 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from flights 3.

Studies are divided on whether flying to meetings helps researchers achieve academic success. A survey 4of 6,000 scientists in France found a positive association between air travel and a measure of scientific influence, theh-index, suggesting that travel is one way early-career researchers gain visibility and senior researchers maintain it. But another survey 5of 705 academics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found no causal relationship between air travel and academic success.

Scientists working to reduce air travel recognize the benefits of attending meetings in person — and few want to stop such travel altogether. Susann Görlinger is co-founder of iilo, a non-profit organization based in Zurich, Switzerland that helps organizations reduce their aviation emissions. She suggests that institutions set carbon budgets and distribute them among researchers according to needs. “People who are still building their careers will probably need a slightly higher budget than more experienced people,” she says.

It is equally important that conference organizers offer alternatives, such as high-quality virtual and hybrid meetings as well as multi-hub meetings accessible by taking a train to the nearest major city. The switch to such alternatives could also make networking opportunities more inclusive for researchers with limited resources and those with caring responsibilities, she says.

Although individuals can make better travel decisions, academic culture needs to change to reduce their carbon footprint, says Jäckle, because "as long as it is necessary to have international conferences on the CV in order to get a professorship, there is actually not much the individual can do."