Modeling individuals' attitudes toward joint out-of-home activity participation with household members

Abstract

Activity-travel patterns of household (HH) members are strongly inter-dependent, and there is currently an increasing realization that such HH interdependencies have to be accommodated explicitly within the more comprehensive framework of activity-based modeling. Activity participation and the associated travel decisions with HH members can be influenced by individuals' preferences and attitudes. This study examines the role that attitudes and beliefs play in joint activity participation decisions with HH members. Ordinal Probit models were used to relate variables that express individuals' attitudes as functions of HH socio-demographic, individual's socio-demographics, zonal socio-demographic, transport level of services, daily activity and travel patterns, and perceived mobility constraints. The results of the models showed that many factors affect the desire to participate in joint out-of-home activities depending on the activity type. This means that some factors might affect the tendency of activity participation of one activity while not affecting this tendency for other activity types. Attitudes were shown to play a significant role in identifying individuals' desire to participate in out-of-home joint activities. © 2013 W. S. Maney & Son Ltd.