Price and convenience are the main factors that influence the travel choices that people make. However, if the corporate ethics of the company you travel with are important to you then you should use National Express trains and coaches, according to alternative consumer organisation Ethical Consumer.

A buyer's guide for journeys of a few hundred miles has been compiled by Ethical Consumer. The guide compares the corporate ethics records of the bus, rail, ferry and airline companies that operate between London and Paris, and from Scotland to the south of England. Each company is given a rating or "ethiscore" out of 20.

The highest ethiscores (9.5) were achieved by National Express Group's coaches and East Coast intercity rail service. The next highest scorer was Eurostar (8), followed by Virgin Trains (7).

Stagecoach's East Midlands Trains and Megabus low cost coach operation received a relatively low ethiscore of 6.5% - the same as budget airline Jet2. Stagecoach was marked down for a number of reasons, including the "excessive" £1m earnings of its chief executive, Brian Souter. However, no mention is made in the guide of the £1m earnings of National Express chief executive, Richard Bowker.

For domestic journeys the buyers guide recommends train operators ahead of airlines. However, Ethical Consumer warned that the public need to be assured of a good deal if they are going to make more ethical journey choices.

"The high prices of intercity rail tickets in the UK has been the subject of public anger and environmentalists' concern," it said. "The fact that the few low price tickets available are easiest to access via the internet means that they are most likely to be accessible to affluent people with online know-how and home computers, which further disenfranchises those on low incomes."