Post-doctoral research fellow

The effects of low-cost carriers on regional dispersal of domestic visitors in Australia

Tay’s Ph.D. dissertation topic was conceived in the context of the development of Australian low-cost carriers and the greater regional dispersal policy of the Australian government. This research examines tourists’ travel mode choice; in particular, the research examines the mode choice as a key factor influencing the link between affordable air travel and dispersal. With the aid of stated choice experiments and discrete choice models, three issues were examined: (1) the differences in the dispersal behaviour between low-cost carrier and network carrier users; (2) the effect of regional destination transport on dispersal; and (3) the effect of low airfares on the bypass of ground-mode-reliant regional destinations. The findings should be of interest to regional destination managers with low-cost carrier services as much as for managers in peripheral destinations without low-cost carrier services.

Tay completed his Ph.D. in 2009. His research involves a microeconomic approach to assess the impact of Australian aviation on the regional dispersal behaviour of visitors. Tay has publications in refereed journals and conferences on the topic of aviation and dispersal.

Tay has six years of teaching experience in the Australian School of Business.
Since 2005, Tay has been tutor-in-charge for a course, Economics of Tourism, in which he has teaching and lecturing experiences in various topics covering the economics of aviation and tourism. Tay was also a tutor in microeconomic and macroeconomic courses while completing his B.Comm (Economics Honours) and B.Sc
(Geography) at the University of NSW.

In the Department of Aviation, Tay is currently a postdoctoral researcher on a STCRC funded project to measure and explain dispersal. Tay also assists research
activities of Tourism and Aviation Economics team of the Corporate Research and Strategy department of the national tourism body, Tourism Australia, on a regular basis. His long-term research aim is to explore and promote
multidisciplinary perspectives in aviation and tourism research, including cross-fertilisation of research methods in transport-tourism economics and geography.