Client: Historic Environment Scotland
Objective
To review and improve Historic Environment Scotland's approach to collecting visitor travel data and calculating associated emissions, providing actionable recommendations to support sustainable travel choices and reduce emissions in line with their net-zero goals.
Case Study
3ADAPT have supported Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to review and provide recommendations on current available data on the organisation’s visitor travel, in support of estimating and reducing associated emissions. HES’s upcoming Carbon Management Plan includes visitor travel emissions as an emission source within its management responsibility and reiterates the organisation’s commitment to reduce visitor travel emissions as part of the responsibility to achieve net zero.
An estimation of visitor travel emissions was undertaken by HES using 2018 as the baseline year. A number of assumptions were made due to a lack of complete data, therefore a review and recommendations on improving data collection was required.
HES has a dispersed portfolio with a mixture of paid entry and free entry sites, often in rural locations with poor public and active transport links. The objectives of this work were to define an approach for collecting and estimating visitor travel emissions. Emissions data was then considered alongside other variables such as the local infrastructure and location of sites to explore options for encouraging visitors to make sustainable choices.
“We really enjoyed working with the 3ADAPT team, who led a really helpful workshop, engaging colleagues across HES and compiling useful recommendations for improving our data collection and nudging behaviour towards more sustainable options. The report and recommendations will be helpful across HES to take further action to estimate and manage its our visitor travel emissions help us enable everyone to access heritage in the most sustainable way possible and prioritise actions to reduce HES’s organisational emissions.”
3ADAPT supported in collating and reviewing relevant internal and external datasets and analysis and understanding the data sources. 3ADAPT conducted several 1-2-1 calls with key internal stakeholders to understand the available data across the organisation, limitations of these and previous relevant work done to date. These interviews were supplemented with a detailed data point review and assessment of completeness and consistency followed by recommendations on improving data collection efforts to support visitor travel emissions estimates.
3ADAPT reviewed and summarised methodologies from national and international attraction sites and organisations to draw from best practice in estimating visitor travel emissions. To supplement the research and data review, 3ADAPT delivered an internal, cross-departmental workshop to identify specific challenges and opportunities for HES in improving visitor travel data collection and nudging visitor travel behaviours.
“As a leading public body in Scotland, we recognise the role we must play in helping Scotland contribute to the global effort in tackling the climate crisis.”
The most significant factors affecting visitor travel emissions were considered, including length of stay and number of reasons for visiting sites to enable apportioning of visitor travel emissions. Suggested next steps for HES were outlined to ensure the findings from the work could be taken forward with clear actions including partnering sector-wide to enable a consistent approach to visitor travel.
