Search

ABSTRACTThis paper presents an analysis of people’s time use patterns, incorporating the mediating role of ICT and personal networks on their daily activity-travel patterns, explicitly addressing the issue of activity fragmentation for social-based episodes. Implementing a seven-day time use survey, which includes temporal, spatial, and social characteristics for each activity, and using a theoretical framework based on current theory, a structural equation model was estimated to study these relationships. The results suggest a positive effect of ICT episodes on social activity interaction, activity fragmentation, and out-of-home social allocated time. We also found that ICTs encourage social trip generation only indirectly. Finally, those who had a social network physically close showed higher levels of fragmentation in their social episodes and less out-of-home social activity time. These results add evidence to this research stream, enhancing, and further clarifying ICT’s role in people’s daily activity behavior.

New data, new technologies, and greater computational power are changing the possibilities for involving stakeholders in transportation planning. This article explores these possibilities by comparing deployments of an interactive web-based public transportation mapping system in four cities of the Global South. Structured workshops focused on different public transportation improvement projects and involved different types of stakeholders. Despite the differences across the workshops, they allow for some comparison of the effects. In relation to the technology itself, participants broadly agreed about its usefulness and usability. Pre-/post-workshop surveys suggest that participants learned about the transportation projects presented but reveal modest evidence in relation to other impacts, such as learning about the concept of accessibility, and gaining an appreciation for the potential broader urban system impacts of public transport projects. Knowledge among the participants tended to converge, and the tool helped promote dialog among participants and generated some empathy for others. The workshop experiences provide some hope for such tools in enhancing public transportation planning processes, globally, but “scaling up” the technology would need to overcome institutional, technical, and procedural challenges.

•Time, space, money, and social interaction are useful dimensions to classify mobility strategies.•Seven mobility strategies display distinctive patterns of daily activity-travel behavior.•Occupational status involves a clear divide between mobility strategies.•People with access to a private vehicle tend to enjoy more opportunities to interact with their personal networks than transit users.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented increase in telework, a trend expected to have lasting effects on the labor market and commuting patterns, including location preferences. Understanding the demand for telework is critical to face the challenges that may come in present and future scenarios with hybrid work arrangements. In this paper, a model for the probability of telework is proposed and estimated with data collected during two different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, in Chile. The model measures the correlation between several socioeconomic characteristics, and latent variables related to concerns about health and the economy, with the probability of teleworking. We find that low-income workers are less likely to telework, and that females are more likely to work from home. Latent variables also played a relevant role at the beginning of the pandemic: a greater concern about health issues increased the probability of teleworking. In comparison, a greater concern about the economic effects of the pandemic had the opposite impact. However, these effects shifted 10 weeks into the pandemic, when a total lockdown was imposed in the largest city. The implications of our findings for both policy and research after the pandemic are discussed.

ABSTRACTWith the interest on understanding and modeling the role of transport on social networks, the objective of this research is to study social network dynamics by explicitly collecting and modeling data from people’s personal networks in two points of time. Using data collected in a two-year panel in Concepción, Chile, a multilevel model highlights the role of respondents’ characteristics and social contact attributes in personal network dynamics. At the respondents’ level, the results highlight the relevance of important life events and material conditions, such as income and car ownership. At the level of the social contacts, the results highlight how tie maintenance is influenced by aspects such as kinship, emotional closeness, monetary support, sex and income similarity, neighboring, and high frequency of face-to-face and telephone interactions. Despite some challenges and limitations, this research remarks the feasibility of collecting personal network dynamics, and its relevance to understand and inform social activity-travel models.

This workshop engaged participants in discussion about issues in incorporating qualitative information, namely attitudes, perceptions, and other psychological-social factors into transport research and analysis. There are many challenges to collecting this information from respondents. This synthesis summarizes the workshop presentations and discussion where participants identified the various types of information desired, reviewed the current challenges in conducting this type of data collection, made recommendations for practice, and outlined an agenda for future research.

In this paper, we present the discussion and main findings from the ISCTSC Workshop B3, which focused on measuring the role of attitudes and perceptions in people's travel choices. The paper considers various issues concerning the design and use of quantitative and qualitative approaches in the measurement of attitudes and perceptions within travel surveys. It first identifies the importance of measuring the underlying psychological motivations for people's travel choices and behaviors and provides some examples of how travel surveys have applied these concepts to date. It then considers the complimentary role of qualitative methods for improving quantitative survey and model design, as well as for providing deeper understandings and interpretations of travel behaviors. Finally, it makes some recommendations for the advancement of research practice in these two respects and also briefly discusses the opportunity for mix method approaches.

Taking as a departing point the general agreement in the literature about the complementary role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social activity travel, the paper focuses on the interplay between different media (face to face, telephone, Internet based) in personal network maintenance, with a special focus on the relevance of distance and socioeconomics. Through an explicit social-structure approach, social networks were conceived of as personal communication systems that people would use to stay socially connected. Using data gathered recently in Concepción, Chile, the study focused on two neighborhoods distinctive because of their income levels. The study examined the interplay between ICT availability and use, the frequency of face-to-face interaction, and the role of distance. Quantitative methods were used to study the specific contexts in which ICT complements face-to-face interaction by identifying the role of distance and key characteristics of egos and alters and the personal networks in which they are embedded. [The author defines "alter" as "social contact." —Ed.] The results suggest that, after controlling for demographics, telephone and Internet have specialized functions, depending on the ego-alter relationship in aspects such as roles, distance, length of the relationship, and age and gender homophily. Therefore, the complementary effect of ICT in social activities is mediated by the social context in which these interactions occur and highlights the relevance of the particularities of the spatial, socioeconomic, and social structure in which social relations are embedded.

The literature has suggested that explicit consideration of psychological factors might help in understanding the transport decision-making process by individuals. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to measure these psychological factors explicitly. Fortunately, social psychology provides an appropriate theoretical framework by which to consider the effects of psychological and contextual aspects on the individual decision-making process. This work studies the role of psychological factors in the mode choice process. Measurement of these factors was made with psychometric tools, which were fit into discrete choice models through a latent variables approach by use of path analysis. Triandis's theory of interpersonal behavior was used as the theoretical framework: observed behavior corresponds to an intention that is mediated by habit and facilitating conditions, with intention depending on three factors: attitude, affect, and social aspects. The data used were collected from a survey that was conducted in 2007 and 2008. The respondents were university lecturers, researchers, and clerical officers who were contacted and interviewed at their workplace about their morning trip to work. The levels of service and cost attributes of the travel modes and socioeconomic and psychometric data for the users were gathered as well. A sample of 409 records was initially available for the estimation process. Inclusion of psychological factors through a latent variables approach helped to improve the fitness level of revealed preference models and to provide an understanding of the role of level-of-service and cost attributes in the decision-making process.

In the context of improving understanding and modeling the capabilities of activity-scheduling processes in travel behavior, this paper explores the role of social networks in the start time and the duration of social activities. The study was performed with a trivariate joint econometric model that was capable of capturing the correlation between unobserved influential factors causing the endogeneity of these three key decisions. The model captures the relevance not only of sociodemographic variables but also of the social network dimension for travelers, or the with whom variable, that is, individuals with whom travelers perform social activities. A particularly relevant case is the role of travel time to social activities, which has a positive effect on longer durations and late start times and which acts as a link between these two basic dimensions (start time and duration) of activity scheduling. The results confirm the relevance of the social context in an episode's temporal characteristics and illustrate aspects that future activity-based travel demand models should incorporate to be able to capture the socializing side of mobility decisions.

In the context of improving understanding and modeling the capabilities of activity-scheduling processes in travel behavior, this paper explores the role of social networks in the start time and the duration of social activities. The study was performed with a trivariate joint econometric model that was capable of capturing the correlation between unobserved influential factors causing the endogeneity of these three key decisions. The model captures the relevance not only of sociodemographic variables but also of the social network dimension for travelers, or the with whom variable, that is, individuals with whom travelers perform social activities. A particularly relevant case is the role of travel time to social activities, which has a positive effect on longer durations and late start times and which acts as a link between these two basic dimensions (start time and duration) of activity scheduling. The results confirm the relevance of the social context in an episode's temporal characteristics and illustrate aspects that future activity-based travel demand models should incorporate to be able to capture the socializing side of mobility decisions.

The literature has suggested that explicit consideration of psychological factors might help in understanding the transport decision-making process by individuals. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to measure these psychological factors explicitly. Fortunately, social psychology provides an appropriate theoretical framework by which to consider the effects of psychological and contextual aspects on the individual decision-making process. This work studies the role of psychological factors in the mode choice process. Measurement of these factors was made with psychometric tools, which were fit into discrete choice models through a latent variables approach by use of path analysis. Triandis's theory of interpersonal behavior was used as the theoretical framework: observed behavior corresponds to an intention that is mediated by habit and facilitating conditions, with intention depending on three factors: attitude, affect, and social aspects. The data used were collected from a survey that was conducted in 2007 and 2008. The respondents were university lecturers, researchers, and clerical officers who were contacted and interviewed at their workplace about their morning trip to work. The levels of service and cost attributes of the travel modes and socioeconomic and psychometric data for the users were gathered as well. A sample of 409 records was initially available for the estimation process. Inclusion of psychological factors through a latent variables approach helped to improve the fitness level of revealed preference models and to provide an understanding of the role of level-of-service and cost attributes in the decision-making process.

Taking as a departing point the general agreement in the literature about the complementary role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social activity travel, the paper focuses on the interplay between different media (face to face, telephone, Internet based) in personal network maintenance, with a special focus on the relevance of distance and socioeconomics. Through an explicit social-structure approach, social networks were conceived of as personal communication systems that people would use to stay socially connected. Using data gathered recently in Concepción, Chile, the study focused on two neighborhoods distinctive because of their income levels. The study examined the interplay between ICT availability and use, the frequency of face-to-face interaction, and the role of distance. Quantitative methods were used to study the specific contexts in which ICT complements face-to-face interaction by identifying the role of distance and key characteristics of egos and alters and the personal networks in which they are embedded. [The author defines “alter” as “social contact.” —Ed.] The results suggest that, after controlling for demographics, telephone and Internet have specialized functions, depending on the ego–alter relationship in aspects such as roles, distance, length of the relationship, and age and gender homophily. Therefore, the complementary effect of ICT in social activities is mediated by the social context in which these interactions occur and highlights the relevance of the particularities of the spatial, socioeconomic, and social structure in which social relations are embedded.

Activity-based approaches to travel demand modeling are increasingly moving from theoretical to operational models. Agent-based microsimulation models are a promising approach as they explicitly conceive travel as an emergent phenomenon from people's activity characteristics and, more explicitly, from their activity-scheduling processes. Activity-scheduling processes are influenced by individuals’ characteristics as well as by the people with whom they interact. Thus, the activity-scheduling process has an intrinsic social context. With social activities used as a case study, the objective of this paper is to investigate empirically the relationship between social context (measured by with whom respondents interacted) and two key aspects of activity scheduling: start time and duration. Econometric models of the combined decisions of with whom to participate and when to start or how much time to spend are estimated to investigate the correlations between “with whom” and start time and duration decisions. Data collected by a 7-day activity diary survey were used for model development. Findings suggest that social context has a relevant role in activity-scheduling processes. For example, with whom people socialize influences social activity-scheduling processes more than do travel time or distances to social travel. In addition to theoretical understanding of the questions investigated here, the models serve as an empirical support for agent-based microsimulation models that could incorporate the role of social networks in activity-scheduling attributes.

Hägerstrand's seminal argument that regional science is about people and not just locations is still a compelling and challenging idea when the spatial distribution of activities is studied. In the context of social activity–travel behavior (hosting and visiting), this issue is particularly fundamental as individuals’ main motivation in making social trips is mostly with whom they interact rather than where they go. A useful approach to incorporate the travelers’ social context is to study explicitly the spatial distribution of their social networks, focusing on social locations as emerging from their contacts, rather than analyzing social activity locations in isolation. In this context, this paper studies the spatial distribution of social activities, focusing on the home distances between specific individuals (egos) and the network members (alters) with whom they socialize—serving as a proxy to study social activity–travel location. Using data from a recent study of personal networks and social interaction, and multilevel models that account for the hierarchical structure of these networks, this paper provides empirical evidence on how the characteristics of individuals and their social context relate to the distance separating them. The results strongly suggest that, although the spatial distribution of social interaction has idiosyncratic characteristics, there are several systematic effects associated with the characteristics of egos, alters, and their personal networks that affect the spatial distribution of relationships, and they can contribute to an understanding of where people perform social activities with others.

We describe an interview-based data-collection procedure for social network analysis designed to aid gathering information about the people known by a respondent and reduce problems with data integrity and respondent burden. This procedure, a participant-aided network diagram (sociogram), is an extension of traditional name generators. Although such a diagram can be produced through computer-assisted programs for interviewing (CAPIs) and low technology (i.e., paper), we demonstrate both practical and methodological reasons for keeping high technology in the lab and low technology in the field. We provide some general heuristics that can reduce the time needed to complete a name generator. We present findings from our Connected Lives field study to illustrate this procedure and compare to an alternative method for gathering network data.