Meeting Appointment and Waiting Behavior with Mobile Communications

Information and communications technologies (ICT) have provided people with many activity opportunities for communications in cyberspace. Mobile phones have made decisions about activity scheduling more flexible and changed travel behavior dramatically. Meeting and waiting behavior could be among the most dramatically changed behaviors since the introduction of ICT. Mobile phones allow one to reschedule appointment time and place without space–time constraints. Young people especially use mobile communications frequently and cleverly. A study was done to investigate young people's decisions about meeting and waiting behaviors and to analyze dynamic rescheduling behavior by mobile communications, in spatial and temporal dimensions. An on-site interviewing survey was conducted in Shinjuku, Tokyo, in December 2003. Information on telecommunications relating to (re)scheduling meeting time and place and on waiting behavior was obtained from 87 young pairs. Reasons for telecommunicating by mobile phone were classified into five categories: making an appointment and deciding on meeting time and place, rescheduling the meeting time, rescheduling the meeting place, informing of late arrival, and informing of the arrival and confirming current location. About half of those who were first to arrive participated in activities that were not at the agreed-on meeting place but were at other activity opportunities near the meeting place. The first arrival's activity choice behavior while waiting was affected by the frequency of visits to the town, whether he or she was considering the possible opportunities around the meeting place, and the length of the expected waiting time and the additional expected waiting time.