Richard Buning

Dr. Buning is a Senior Lecturer within the tourism discipline in the UQ Business School and the research lead for the UQ Micromobility Research Cluster. His research interests reside at the intersection of physical activity, travel, and events. Within this area, his research agenda is focused on how tourists are physically active as both a driver of tourism behaviour (i.e., active lifestyle sports) and during visitation (i.e., active transport). His research works on active lifestyle sports closely mirrors his passions in active sport tourism for mountain biking, cycling, running, rock climbing, hiking, and more. His work crosses over to active transport through bikeshare, e-scooters, and more generally micromobility where he is focused on tourism usage and related impacts.

The outcome of his work enables communities, events, and organizations to efficiently market to and attract visitors, encourage physical activity generally, and improve the related impact to destinations as a form of sustainable tourism. Prior to academia, Dr. Buning worked in the running event industry managing race logistics and continues to work with physical activity focused organizations, events, and communities as a consultant in developing data driven business strategy.

His research methodology speciality is in mixed methods tailored to the research question using both quantitative methods (i.e., survey research, secondary data) and qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups. ). Often his work is interdisciplinary in collaboration with scholars from geography, urban planning, and transport engineering using a wide range of data sources,

Dr. Buning is regularly featured in the media, serves as an expert to government, and publishes on the topics of active transport, sport tourism, and event management.

Research methods expertise includes:

• Survey research design and analysis
• Structural equation modelling
• Delphi studies
• Quantitative scale development
• In-depth interviews and focus groups
• Grounded theory
• Secondary data and meta-analysis

Interested in working on research, teaching, or consulting projects? Please get in touch!