Search

This article represents an attempt to reformulate the spatial economics of consumer behavior. It is apparent that alternative approaches toward the explanation of consumer choice of destinations for the journey-to-shop are needed at this point in the development of theory in geography.

A general framework is presented which integrates destination choice and travel behavior with a more general model of the behavior of households. The general approach treats households as producers which use tangible goods as inputs to produce the more abstract commodities which are the direct objects of utility. The approach is adapted for spatial choice behavior by defining the inputs to household production as place-bound entities. Consumption of these inputs requires expenditures of both time and money at particular locations. Households' choices are subject to time constraints as well as monetary constraints, and additional constraints ensure that the necessary travel takes place. Household equilibrium involves the selection of places and the associated demand theory accommodates statements about the demand for places and the demand for travel.

A family of surrogate spatial interaction models is developed and tested. The family consists of eight separate but related models: four classes with two models per class. The surrogate models differ from conventional models with respect to structure, numbers of parameters, and computational complexity. The first section of the paper draws the distinction between conventional and surrogate spatial interaction models. The second section presents the family of surrogate models being considered. The third section of the paper is devoted to an empirical test of the models in analyzing data from three spatial systems: an outdoor recreation system, a university enrollment system, and a professional society system. Issues relevant to selecting the most appropriate class of model are discussed.