Factors influencing social satisfaction and loneliness: a path analysis

Social networks have increasingly received attention in transportation research. However, more subjective aspects of the social network, such as social satisfaction and loneliness hardly received any attention in travel behavior research, whereas these aspects are very important in shaping quality of life. In this study, a path analysis is used to analyze the relationships between personal characteristics, neighborhood characteristics, travel behavior, social interactions, social satisfaction and loneliness. The analyses are based on data collected in Eindhoven and surrounding towns in the Netherlands in a survey among 177 respondents. Results show relationships between mobility and social aspects. They indicate that frequency of walking affects social satisfaction, frequency of cycling affects the number of social interactions and car ownership affects loneliness. Regarding the neighborhood characteristics, interesting results are found as well. The percentage of non-western ethnic minorities in the neighborhood is found to negatively affect social satisfaction, social cohesion is found to affect the number of social interactions and place attachment is found to affect loneliness.     

A cointegration analysis of bilateral air travel flows: The case of international travel to and from the United States

Demand for international air travel has risen over the past decade causing international visitation to the US to reach a record high in 2012. This paper assesses the dynamic impacts of GDP, exchange rate, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on bilateral air travel flows between the US and its 11 major travel and trading partners. An autoregressive distributed lag modeling approach is employed to estimate short- and long-run relationships between variables. Long-run results demonstrate foreign GDP as the major determinant of demand for inbound travel to the US and US GDP is a crucial factor affecting demand for outbound travel from the US. These findings support a strong linkage between economic growth and demand for international air travel. The real exchange rate has relatively little impact on the bilateral air travel flows. The US dollar appreciation against foreign currencies is found to reduce demand for inbound travel to the US, while having mixed effects on outbound travel from the US. In the short-run, economic growth tends to be a primary factor influencing international travel flows to and from the US. The 9/11 market shock has a detrimental short- and long-run effect on the bilateral air travel flows, implying that the impact of 9/11 is prolonged in international air travel markets.     

Ethnic neighborhoods,social networks,and inter-household carpooling: A comparison across ethnic minority groups

The implications of racial residential segregation on travel behavior have remained understudied, despite the persistent existence of segregation. Using the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, I investigate whether residence in a co-ethnic neighborhood affects the likelihood that ethnic minorities will form inter-household carpools, and if so, how such effects differ across race or ethnic groups. Inter-household carpooling requires arrangements and interactions between people living in geographical proximity, so it will likely reflect the social networks of a neighborhood. The results show that Hispanics and Asians who reside in their co-ethnic neighborhoods, regardless of immigrant status, are more likely to use inter-household carpools for non-work purposes than their counterparts living outside co-ethnic neighborhoods. In contrast, black neighborhood residency is not associated with the likelihood that African Americans will do inter-household carpooling, regardless of trip purpose. These differences across racial/ethnic groups suggest that the role of neighborhoods in promoting social ties as reflected by activities such as external carpooling is complex. Residence in a black neighborhood may be less of a choice than residence in a Hispanic or Asian neighborhood due to the long history of black segregation in the US. With less residential choice, the propensity to develop local social ties may be weaker.     

Activity participation as a mediating variable to analyze the effect of land use on travel behavior: A structural equation modeling approach

As activity based approach is receiving increased attention over the past decades, a variety of studies have explored the impacts of land use patterns not only on travel behavior but also on activity participation. Using data from the Tengzhou Household Travel Survey, this paper tests the relationships among land use patterns, activity participation and travel behavior, by comparing results from two structural equation models: one model without activity participation and a second model which adds activity participation as a mediating variable between land use patterns and travel behavior characteristics. The results suggest that the indirect effects through activity participation decision play important roles, which may reinforce the direct effects of land use patterns on travel behavior. Moreover, ignoring activity participation as a mediating variable may also lead to insignificant effects of land use patterns. We conclude that the intermediary nature of activity participation should be taken into consideration.     

Does the built environment make a difference? Additional evidence from the daily activity and travel behavior of homemakers living in New York City and suburbs

Homemakers, unlike employed people who have jobs and unemployed people who are seeking jobs, are a special group who do not have to spend time working out of the home, commuting to work, or looking for a job. Given that a regular job typically takes 9 h (This includes an assumed half-hour one-way commute time.) a day, the discretion to allocate their time is presumably much greater than other groups.In this paper, we focus our attention on homemakers’ activity and travel behavior in neighborhoods with different characteristics (e.g., very dense areas, dense areas, and suburbs). The question to be answered is quite simple: are there differences between travel behaviors of homemakers living in different types of neighborhoods? If yes, can these differences be attributed to differences in the built environment?The dataset used in the study is the Household Interview Survey (HIS) collected in 1997/1998 in the New York metropolitan area. We found significant differences in activity and travel related behavior by homemakers living in different types of neighborhoods. Compared to suburban homemakers, New York City homemakers spend more time on discretionary activities and less time on maintenance activities; use public transportation and walk more frequently; and conduct fewer trip chains. The study found that both individuals’ socio-economic characteristics and built environment appear to play a role in explaining behavior. A probably more important factor in explaining people’s time use behavior is the interrelationship between activities and trips, and between different types of activities.     

Bounded Tourism: Immigrant Politics,Consumption, and Traditions at Plaza Mexico

Conceived and owned by Korean investors, the shopping mall Plaza Mexico in Southern California embodies a unique case of invention and commodification of traditions for locally-bound immigrants and US citizens of Mexican descent, showing the force of the contemporary processes of deterritorialisation and reterritorilisation of identities and the recreations of imagined conceptions of homeland. The Plaza is a unique architectural recreation of Mexican regional and national icons that make its patrons feel ‘as if you were in Mexico’. Plaza Mexico produces a space of diasporic, bounded tourism, whereby venture capitalists opportunistically reinvent tradition within a structural context of constrained immigrant mobility. While most of the contemporary theory of tourism, travel and place emphasise the erosion of national boundaries and the fluidity of territories, the case of Plaza Mexico brings us to appreciate this phenomenon and its opposite as well – the strengthening of national borders and their impact on the (in)mobility of millions of individuals.     

Analysing mobility biographies with the life course calendar: a retrospective survey methodology for longitudinal data collection

Transportation research is in need of longitudinal data to better understand travel behaviour. This paper describes a new survey method to collect longitudinal data, called the life course calendar. We discuss the need for and the uses of this instrument with reference to specific case study material and explore to what extent the life course calendar is suitable for the study of individual life courses and travel behaviour. In the first part of this article we give an overview of current research on the causal relationships between certain life events and travel behaviour. Based on the outcomes of the literature review we analyse life course calendars of 646 respondents. Considering the explorative character of our case study material the results are quite promising. Most notably information on car purchases, on relocations, and changes of the work place has been well recorded which indicates that the life course calendar is suited for the study of changes of spatial contexts and accessibility. The data analysis has provided initial results on the distribution of key events over the life course and on the relation of such events to changes in travel behaviour. Significant effects were found for key events such as relocation, change of job, birth of first child, separation/divorce, moving in with partner and retirement. The life course calendar can be advantageous, especially if it is employed to supplement extensive panel studies.     

Out of sight,out of cancellation: The impact of psychological distance on the cancellation behavior of tourists

Travel products such as package tours, Airtels, hotel rooms, and airline seats lose their value unless they are sold by a certain date. Therefore, predicting customer behavior allows travel companies to maximize their profits, minimize their loss of revenue by balancing supply and demand (e.g., determining an overbooking level), and wisely respond to pressures from the government and customer groups to lessen cancellation penalties. For this reason, it is important to investigate what cause people to cancel their travel plans after reservations have been made. Based on construal level theory (CLT), this study tries to identify the reasons for the cancellation behavior of customers in accordance with different types of psychological distance between travelers and their travel or reservation behavior. Moreover, it examines the moderating role of tourists’ dependence on a travel agency in these relationships for predicting tourist cancellation patterns in a more specific manner.     

Empirical evidence from the Greater Toronto Area on the acceptability and impacts of HOT lanes

This paper describes a study on willingness to pay (WTP) and public acceptability for High-Occupancy/Toll (HOT) lanes using empirical evidence from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. From a stated preference survey of more than 250 drivers, we estimate mean willingness to pay values under various trip conditions and for various traveler characteristics. The study provides statistically significant evidence on the relationships between willingness to pay and the improvement in travel speeds in HOT lanes, the length of the trip, and the urgency of on-time arrival. Furthermore, our study confirms several literature findings from previous studies on the relationship between travelers' willingness to pay and income as well as prior experience with HOT lanes. Some of the findings are qualitatively validated on the basis of the observed travel behavior in choosing tolled facilities over untolled facilities during periods of heightened congestion and urgency.     

Refugees in Vermont: mobility and acculturation in a new immigrant destination

This paper explores the idea of mobility for recent refugees who have resettled in a non-traditional immigrant destination in the northeastern U.S. It is based on a multi-year qualitative study of travel behavior, preferences, and needs amongst these new arrivals in a small city in the state of Vermont. As a result of their experiences of both forced displacement from their home as well as stasis within camp settings and the refugee determination process, refugees are an example of what some have called “a dialectic of movement/moorings” (Urry, 2003: 125), both on the move and trapped in place. Their resettlement in the U.S., as this paper illustrates, may represent a further extension of this dialectic—placed by government agents in new immigrant reception areas not of their own choosing, forced to commute long distances and into unfamiliar environments for work and limited in their abilities to access healthcare, education and employment (amongst other services) due to a range of transportation barriers. I argue in this paper that refugee mobilities in a new settlement site are about more than inconvenience: barriers to movement may constitute obstacles to acculturation, integration, self-empowerment, and community building.     

The built environment,travel attitude,and travel behavior: Residential self-selection or residential determination?

In examining the impacts of the built environment on travel behavior, studies focused on residential self-selection mostly assume that people self-select residential built environment based on their travel preferences. However, the residential self-selection hypothesis is challenged for a number of reasons including the arguments that that at least in some societies a large percentage of people do not have the privilege to self-select their residence and the built environment may have a significant influence on a person's travel attitude. To shed some light on this debate, this paper makes use of data from a household activity-diary survey conducted in Beijing, China, in 2011–2012 to examine both the hypothesis of residential self-selection and that of residential environment determination. We adopt the natural experimental approach and divide the sample into two groups based on whether or not the respondents had much freedom in regard to choosing where to live: one with the possibility of self-selection and the other one without this possibility. We found reciprocal influences between residential built environment and travel attitude/preference for the first group and influence of residential built environment on travel preferences for the second group. We argue that the complex relationships between the built environment, travel attitude, and travel behavior are featured by both residential self-selection and residential determination. Failing to acknowledge the effects of the built environment on travel attitude may lead to the overestimation of the influence of residential self-selection on the link between the built environment and travel behavior and underestimation of the influence of the built environment on travel behavior.     

US immigrants and bicycling: Two-wheeled in Autopia

Immigrants to the United States—particularly new immigrants—are more likely than the native born to travel by bicycle. This paper explores the extent to which the use of bicycles by immigrants can be explained by variables such as income, age, automobile availability, and neighborhood characteristics. Results from multinomial logistic mode choice models suggest that, even after controlling for these factors, a large and significant “immigrant effect” remains. The effect size is large for all immigrant groups by sending country, though some immigrant groups—such as those from East and Southeast Asia—are more likely than are others to use bicycles after controlling for other factors. Several avenues for further research are introduced, and policy implications are discussed.     

Place,context and activity–travel behavior: Introduction to the special section on geographies of activity–travel behavior

This special issue addresses a number of research gaps in existing literature concerning the geographies of activity–travel behavior. We argue that places shape individuals' engagement in activities and trip making behavior, and in return users of different transport modes value and experience places differently. Furthermore, interactions between place and activity–travel behavior vary in different geographical, social and weather contexts. This introductory paper will develop these arguments and introduce the papers included in this special issue.     

The multiplicity of self-selection: What do travel attitudes influence first,residential location or work place?

Residential self-selection has been widely considered as an important issue in quantifying the impacts of the residential built environment on travel behavior and much empirical evidence regarding the nature and magnitude of the self-selection effect has been reported. Nevertheless, people may be based on travel attitudes/needs to self-select not only residential location, but also work place, car ownership, etc. In other words, the impacts of long-term decisions other than residential location choices (e.g., decisions on work place, car ownership, etc.) on travel behavior may also be biased by the self-selection effect. However, self-selection concerning these long-term decisions has not been explored much in the travel behavior literature. The role of residential self-selection would not be properly evaluated if self-selections concerning other long-term decisions were not considered because they are often related. This paper addresses this research gap in the travel behavior literature by exploring the multiplicity of travel-based self-selection. We jointly examine the possible self-selections concerning residential location, workplace, commuting distance and car ownership in an integrated framework, taking into consideration the interrelationships among these decisions. Data are derived from an activity-travel diary survey conducted in 2016 in Beijing, China. We classify the respondents into two groups based on the choice order of their current residential and work locations and conduct a comparative analysis using structural equation models. It is found that self-selection exists in all long-term choices examined in the study. The choices of residential location and work place are found to be mutually dependent. Consequently, both choices have indirect impacts on travel behavior through the other choice.     

Spatial variations in active mode trip volume at intersections: a local analysis utilizing geographically weighted regression

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) models have been employed in previous studies regarding vehicular travel demands, but few studies have locally modeled walking travel demands at intersections to address the issue of spatially varying relationships. Harnessing a comprehensive collection of walking and bicycling traffic counts over 10 years in Chittenden County, Vermont, US, along with socioeconomic characteristics, transit accessibility indices, land use attributes and characteristics of intersections and roadway networks, this study utilizes GWR models to identify whether there are spatially varying relationships between active mode travel demands and ambient built-environment attributes. One Ordinary Least Square (OLS) model and two GWR models were parametrically calibrated: a full GWR model of all local variables and a mixed GWR model of both global and local variables. K-fold cross-validation method is used to select variables that significantly influence the volume of active travel modes in the OLS model. The uniform set of variables is investigated in two GWR models. Only residuals of the mixed GWR model exhibit spatial independence. The prediction accuracy of the three models is respectively compared by means of the k-fold cross-validation method. Results show that the mixed GWR model has higher prediction accuracy, while the other two models have roughly the same level of performance. We find that not all independent variables possess a spatially varying relationship with active mode volumes. The flexibility of the mixed GWR model that allows some independent variables to be global strengthens its prediction power. With these findings, transportation planners can dynamically estimate bicycle and pedestrian volumes at widespread intersections, and this geographical realism would facilitate local transportation planning, facility design, safety enhancement and operation analysis, as well as instilling new insights into interdisciplinary spatial research domain.     

Immigrant settlement patterns,transit accessibility,and transit use

Public transit is immensely important among recent immigrants for enabling daily travel and activity participation. The objectives of this study are to examine whether immigrants settle in areas of high or low transit accessibility and how this affects transit mode share. This is analyzed via a novel comparison of two gateway cities: Sydney, Australia and Toronto, Canada. We find that in both cities, recent immigrants have greater levels of public transit accessibility to jobs, on average, than the overall population, but the geography of immigrant settlement is more suburbanized and less clustered around commuter rail in Toronto than in Sydney. Using logistic regression models with spatial filters, we find significant positive relationships between immigrant settlement patterns and transit mode share for commuting trips, after controlling for transit accessibility and other socio-economic factors, indicating an increased reliance on public transit by recent immigrants. Importantly, via a sensitivity analysis, we find that these effects are greatest in peripheral suburbs and rural areas, indicating that recent immigrants in these areas have more risks of transport-related social exclusion due to reliance on insufficient transit service.     

The relationship between recent gasoline price fluctuations and transit ridership in major US cities

The unprecedented increase in gasoline costs between August 2005 and July 2008 has become a major public issue in the US. Of the contentions and potential solutions surrounding higher gasoline costs, one receiving relatively little attention has been the role of public transit. This research examines that question by analyzing the relationship between gasoline prices and transit ridership from January 2002 to April 2008 in nine major US cities. Regression analysis is used to assess the degree to which variability in rail and bus transit ridership is attributable to gasoline costs and fluctuations in gasoline cost, controlling for service changes, seasonality, and inherent trending. The results indicate that a small but statistically significant amount of ridership fluctuation is due to changes in gasoline prices. The results are discussed in light of the policy and practical implications of higher gasoline prices for mass transit and the potential for long term changes in US travel behavior.     

Analysis of travel behavior in Arab communities in Israel: a comparison of household surveys

This paper analyzes the main characteristics of travel behavior by the Arab minority community in Israel and discusses two issues related to household travel surveys: data collection among minorities and under-reporting of mid-day trips.Household travel surveys are generally designed and conducted for the majority population and, therefore, lack a proper accounting of minorities and miss many of their less-frequent trips. An alternative approach to conducting household surveys is presented, with the aim of improving data quality for transportation planning. The survey was designed for and conducted in three Arab towns in Israel. The main improvement of the survey involves better interaction between interviewer and interviewee, which should materialize into a relaxed environment that allows for obtaining detailed, reliable results within a reasonable amount of time.The results of the survey employing the alternative approach were compared to a sub-sample of the same towns taken from a regional survey conducted by the regional planning agency at the same time. The paper presents simple statistics on the main variables for each survey. Significant differences are found in the two data sets, mostly regarding the frequency of less frequent, non-home-based trips. A plausible explanation for these differences relates to the more detailed and improved data collected in the new survey.     

基于收益管理理论的铁路客运专线价格策略研究简

在我国高速铁路网快速发展的背景下,有必要对铁路客运网络与旅客出行行为的关系进行深入研究,为路网规划提供参考依据。基于路网规划阶段确定的包含高速铁路与普速铁路的网络布局结构特征,对铁路旅客出行路径的选择倾向进行研究,建立了用于反映铁路旅客出行路径选择倾向的多项Logit模型,提出了相应的铁路旅客出行路径搜索算法,通过算例分析,验证了模型与算法的有效性,并对铁路路网规划工作提出建议。     

Transit market research using structural equation modeling and attitudinal market segmentation

This paper presents a comprehensive approach for identifying potential transit markets and for developing strategies to increase public transport ridership. The approach uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to identify simultaneously travelers’ attitudes, travel behavior, and the causal relationships between a traveler's socioeconomic profile and his/her attitude toward travel. Travel attitudes are also used to identify distinct market segments and to develop plans that best serve the needs of each segment and increase transit ridership. The approach is demonstrated with a case study from the Utah Transit Authority.