An analysis of the social context of children’s weekend discretionary activity participation

This paper examines the discretionary time-use of children, including the social context of children’s participations. Specifically, the paper examines participation and time investment in in-home leisure as well as five different types of out-of-home discretionary activities: (1) shopping, (2) social, (3) meals, (4) passive recreation (i.e., physically inactive recreation, such as going to the movies or a concert), and (5) active recreation (i.e., physically active recreation, such as playing tennis or running). The social context of children’s activity participation is also examined by focusing on the accompanying individuals in children’s activity engagement. The accompanying arrangement is classified into one of six categories: (1) alone, (2) with mother and no one else, (3) with father and no one else, (4) with both mother and father, and no one else, (5) with other individuals, but no parents, and (6) with other individuals and one or both parents. The utility-theoretic Multiple Discrete-Continuous Extreme Value (MDCEV) is employed to model time-use in one or more activity purpose–company type combinations. The data used in the analysis is drawn from the 2002 Child Development Supplement (CDS) to the U.S. Panel Study Income Dynamics (PSID). The results from the model can be used to examine the time-use choices of children, as well as to assess the potential impacts of urban and societal policies on children’s activity participation and time-use decisions. Our findings also emphasize the need to collect, in future travel surveys, more extensive and higher quality data capturing the intra- and inter-household interactions between individuals (including children). To our knowledge, the research in this paper is the first transportation-related study to rigorously and comprehensively analyze the social dimension of children’s activity participation.

An analysis of children’s leisure activity engagement: examining the day of week, location, physical activity level, and fixity dimensions

This paper presents a detailed analysis of discretionary leisure activity engagement by children. Children’s leisure activity engagement is of much interest to transportation professionals from an activity-based travel demand modeling perspective, to child development professionals from a sociological perspective, and to health professionals from an active lifestyle perspective that can help prevent obesity and other medical ailments from an early age. Using data from the 2002 Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper presents a detailed analysis of children’s discretionary activity engagement by day of week (weekend versus weekday), location (in-home versus out-of-home), type of activity (physically active versus passive), and nature of activity (structured versus unstructured). A mixed multiple discrete-continuous extreme value model formulation is adopted to account for the fact that children may participate in multiple activities and allocate positive time duration to each of the activities chosen. It is found that children participate at the highest rate and for the longest duration in passive unstructured leisure activities inside the home. Children in households with parents who are employed, higher income, or higher education were found to participate in structured outdoor activities at higher rates. The child activity modeling framework and methodology presented in this paper lends itself for incorporation into larger activity-based travel model systems where it is imperative that children’s activity-travel patterns be explicitly modeled—both from a child health and well-being policy perspective and from a travel forecasting perspective.

Modeling children’s school travel mode and parental escort decisions

Understanding of the activity-travel patterns of children is becoming increasingly important to various policy makers. Further, there is also a growing recognition that intra-household interactions need to be explicitly accommodated in travel models for realistic forecasts and policy evaluation. In the light of these issues, this paper contributes towards an overall understanding of the school-travel behavior of children and the related interdependencies among the travel patterns of parents and children. An econometric model is formulated to simultaneously determine the choice of mode and the escorting person for children’s travel to and from school. The 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) data are used in the model estimation process. Empirical results indicate that the characteristics of child like age, gender, and ethnicity, and employment and work flexibility characteristics of the parents have strong impacts on the mode choice decisions. In addition, the impacts of some of these attributes on the choice of mode to school are different from the corresponding impacts on the choice of mode from school. The distance between home and school is found to strongly and negatively impact the choice of walking to and from school, with the impact being stronger for walking to school. Several land-use and built-environment variables were explored, but were found not to be statistically significant predictors.

Working from 9 to 6? An analysis of in-home and out-of-home working schedules

The widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) and flexible work arrangements have enabled people to schedule their work activities in more flexible ways. New forms of working have already emerged. However, research about flexible work schedules is still scarce. The aim of this study is to determine the factors impacting the propensity to adopt a flexible work schedule, and establish how and to what extent the timing of work is influenced by ICTs, work, and sociodemographic characteristics. The analysis suggests that work-related characteristics and ICT usage seem to be more important for work-schedule flexibility than sociodemographic characteristics are.     

A systematic review of disability’s treatment in the active school travel and children’s independent mobility literatures

While various forms of social difference (e.g. gender, age, race/ethnicity, and class) have been engaged in the active school travel (AST) and children’s independent mobility (CIM) literatures, one form has gone largely unconsidered: disability. Disregard for disability within these literatures is troubling, as it leaves children’s experiences of disability associated with independent mobility and school travel unquestioned, which in turn helps to allow their experiences of exclusion to persist. This paper presents a systematic review of the AST and CIM literatures that was undertaken with a view to providing insight into three questions. (1) To what extent is disability considered in the literatures in comparison to other forms of social difference? (2) How is disability engaged? (3) How could disability be approached differently such that experiences of children (and their households) living with disability are better accounted for moving forward (e.g. provided with equitable travel/mobility options)? Following a detailed consideration of the systematic review process, this paper presents figures and tables showing the extent to which disability has been considered in the two literatures in relation to other forms of social difference. To show how transport scholars and others are engaging disability, 29 studies were identified for in-depth, qualitative review. These studies are summarized and then discussed in relation to their geographic focus, the forms of disability they considered, their treatment of children’s perspective and agency, and the disability perspectives they employed. It is suggested that disability and its relationships with other forms of social difference, as well as the largely unquestioned normalcy of children’s disability experiences, warrant further inquiry within the AST and CIM literatures. We propose that drawing upon a critical ableist studies perspective may be useful for any such inquiry due to its focus on ableism and normalcy, as well as its recognition of the complex intersectionality of disability experiences.     

Shared school transportation: determinants of carpooling as children’s school travel mode in California

Transportation - Carpooling has potential as an alternative mode of school transportation along with other viable options, especially at a time when technology continues to increase our reliance...     

Developing an integrated scobit-based activity participation and time allocation model to explore influence of childcare on women’s time use behaviour

Focusing on the influence of childcare on women’s time use behaviour, this paper develops an integrated model of activity participation and time allocation, where the former is represented based on a scobit model and the latter based on a multi-linear utility function under the utility-maximizing principle. The integration of the scobit model with the time allocation model is done by applying Lee’s transformation. Especially, the scobit model is adopted to relax the assumption, made in the Logit or Probit model, that individuals having indifferent preferences over participation and non-participation are most sensitive to changes in explanatory variables. Using a large-scale time use data (66,839 persons) collected in Japan, the effectiveness of the proposed integrated model is empirically confirmed. It is revealed that the probabilities of participating in compulsory-contracted activities and discretionary activities with the highest sensitivity to changes in explanatory variables are 65 and 81%, respectively. Variances of social childcare variables explain about half of the total variance of the time use for discretionary activities; however, for compulsory-contracted activities, social childcare variables explain only less than 1% of the total variance of activity participation and less than 10% of total variable of time allocation.     

Correction to: Shared school transportation: determinants of carpooling as children’s school travel mode in California

Transportation - In the online published article, in figure 2 a value is missing in column 4. The correct figure is given in this correction. The original article has been corrected.     

India’s air traffic: towards an empirical framework for systems analysis

The paper explores patterns of flows within India’s Air Traffic System through the lens of carriers’ networks and route structures between 2006 and 2014. Through observations of frequency distributions and their distinct patterns an analytic framework is derived heuristically by means of classification and aggregation. The well-known skewed traffic distribution which spatially concentrates traffic around relatively few airports serves as the starting point for decomposing the air traffic system (ATS) into its constituent route types. Airline operations along distinct route classes allows for classifying individual carrier’s network features as an embedded part of the system. Discussion of their role includes a spatial component. Inferences about development paths – past, present, future – of the Indian commercial ATS can be made.     

Children’s mode choice for the school trip: the role of distance and school location in walking to school

Rising levels of childhood obesity in the United States and a 75% decline in the proportion of children walking to school in the past 30 years have focused attention on school travel. This paper uses data from the US Department of Transportation’s 2001 National Household Travel Survey to analyze the factors affecting mode choice for elementary and middle school children. The analysis shows that walk travel time is the most policy-relevant factor affecting the decision to walk to school with an estimated direct elasticity of −0.75. If policymakers want to increase walking rates, these findings suggest that current policies, such as Safe Routes to School, which do not affect the spatial distribution of schools and residences will not be enough to change travel behavior. The final part of the paper uses the mode choice model to test how a land use strategy—community schools—might affect walking to school. The results show that community schools have the potential to increase walking rates but would require large changes from current land use, school, and transportation planning practices.

Simultaneous modeling of individuals’ duration and expenditure decisions in out-of-home leisure activities

In this paper, we propose an activity model under time and budget constraints to simultaneously predict the allocation of time and money to out-of-home leisure activities. The proposed framework considers the activity episode level, given that the activity is scheduled. Thus, the model considers the decision of the quantities for duration and expenditure spent during the activity. We use a flexible utility function and show how the simultaneous equations can be estimated by using structural equations model (SEM) estimation techniques to handle the endogeneity problem of time and expenditure. The estimation results are based on a large national leisure diary data set collected in 2008 in the Netherlands, which provides detailed information about time and money spent as well as timing and location attributes of the activities. The analysis reveals that socio-demographics, travel party, timing and location variables influence the duration and expenditure of activity episodes. It shows that various socio-demographic groups display different preferences in terms of the time and money spent on activities. The results also indicate substitution relationships between spending more time and money for various activity categories. Thus it is concluded that the analysis provides useful results for a better understanding of combined time and money allocation decisions for leisure activities.     

Factors affecting children’s journeys to school: a joint escort-mode choice model

A child’s mode of travelling to school is influenced by, or dependent on, parental choices. Thus, an increasing proportion of car trips may reflect parental choices and constraints. Whether a parent can escort their children to school may depend on their scheduling and spatial constraints, e.g., work schedule and job location in relation to home and school locations. This research aims to understand the effect of household bundling constraints on a child’s escort-mode choice. In this study, school trip data are drawn from the 2001 SCAG (Southern California Association of Governments) Post Census Regional Household Travel Survey. The study area is the five-county Los Angeles region. Our findings show that the parents’, especially the mother’s, increased working hours and more distant job locations result in an increased likelihood of several alternative escort-mode choices. Mothers who work longer hours and further away from home are less likely to chauffeur their children. These trips have been substituted by alternative escort choices such as independent travel and being escorted by fathers, or alternative mode choices such as active commuting and busing. The effect of increased working hours may be offset by the option of flexible working hours, which allows parents to arrange more escort trips. This study elucidates an important aspect in explaining children’s changing mode choice in journeys to school and sheds light on current policy efforts in reducing children’s car dependency.     

An integrated analysis of workers’ physically active activity and active travel choice behavior

Using Texas add-on sample data from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, this study examines adult workers’ daily active choice decisions in the context of physical activity and attendant health benefits. The study looked at workers’ two choice behaviors: active activity and active travel. The first choice behavior, active activity, is developed as an ordered-response model based on the number of physically active recreational activities pursued during the workday. The second choice behavior, active travel, is developed as a binary-response model that examines workers’ active travel choices—whether or not the worker used any active mode of travel during the same workday. The study improves the understanding and knowledge of observed factors influencing workers’ physically active activity-travel behavior. The study also provides several observations regarding the role (and constraints) of employment in individuals’ active choices. Using a flexible copula modeling methodology, we explore the true correlation (or dependence) between the two behavior choices that could occur due to the presence of unobserved factors, suggesting a simultaneously low or simultaneously high propensity for being physically active across workers. The study findings suggest that transportation and public health policy makers can mutually benefit from encouraging workers to be physically active (from an activity and/or travel perspective). Overall, the study draws attention to the integrated nature of the public health and transportation fields, thereby providing a distinct view of active/inactive choice behavior. To our knowledge, this is the first study exploring a rich variety of components for workers’ active activity-travel behavior through a robust copula approach.     

An empirical analysis of freight transport traffic modes in Brazil, 1996–2012

This paper analyses the performance of freight transportation modes in Brazil – namely air, water, rail and road – from February 1996 to August 2012 by investigating their long memory properties using fractional integration and autoregressive models on monthly tonnage data. Two important features are analysed: the degree of dependence of transportation traffic across time and its seasonal structure over the period. Furthermore, the stability of parameters across the sample period is investigated, incorporating potential structural breaks in the data, which describe discontinuity in freight transportation traffic. Some policy implications are derived.     

The influence of parents’ travel patterns,perceptions and residential self-selectivity to their children travel mode shares

Using the UK National Travel Survey from 2002 to 2006, this paper investigates the influence of households’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions on accessibilities and their travel patterns on their children daily travel mode share. In doing this, this study introduces a model structure that represents the complex interactions between the parents’ travel patterns, their perceptions on public transport services and their reported residential self-selectivity reasons and the children travel mode shares. This structure is analysed with structural equation modelling. The model estimation results show that parents’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on accessibilities and their daily travel patterns significantly influence the children’s daily travel mode shares. However, the effects are not uniform across household members. This study has revealed that households’ residential self-selectivity behaviours have more correlations with the children’s non-motorised mode shares, whilst the parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on transport infrastructure and public transport service qualities have more correlations with parents’ mode shares. The results also confirm that parents’ non-motorised modes use in travelling is highly correlated with the children’s physically active travel mode shares. However, at the same time, the results also show that the effects of mothers’ car use to the children travel mode shares is more apparent than fathers’.     

Motorcycle-based adolescents’ travel behaviour during the school morning commute and the effect of intra-household interaction on departure time and mode choice

We hypothesise that intra-household interaction influences home departure time and mode choice for the morning commute. In Indonesia, over 71% of vehicles on the road are motorcycles. This fact increases the significance of household interaction in influencing transport mode choice since the simplicity of the motorcycle allows a great degree of versatility in regard to multiple family member transport. To emphasise this point, our study focuses on the unique travel behaviour of adolescents during the school morning commute which, due to the use of the motorcycle, is a combination of the travel behaviour of accompanied children and escorting adults. Our study discovers that adolescents are likely to shift their school arrival time very early or close to the designated starting time in relation to motorcycle-based parental escort to school. In regard to mode choice, adolescent students prefer to be escorted by motorcycle rather than take public transport.     

Investigation of carriers’ ability to transfer toll increases: an empirical analysis of freight agents’ relative market power

Transportation - Design of effective freight policies requires a comprehensive understanding of freight agents’ interactions. A critical component of the interaction is the freight...     

Impacts of parental gender and attitudes on children’s school travel mode and parental chauffeuring behavior: results for California based on the 2009 National Household Travel Survey

Research has shown that parental attitudes are a significant predictor of children’s active commuting (walking or biking) to school. However, the impact of parental gender on parental attitudes, and the link between parental attitudes and the gender gap in parental chauffeuring behavior have not received much attention. This paper examines these questions by applying discrete choice models to California data from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey while controlling for a wide range of variables characterizing parents, their children, households, schools, and the local built environment. Our results, conveyed via odds ratios, show that mothers are more likely to have higher concerns about traffic volume, which in turn reduces the likelihood that their children will walk or bike to school. Moreover, even though parental attitudes significantly influence parental chauffeuring behavior, their ability to explain the gender chauffeuring gap is limited. When holding equal concerns, mothers are still more likely than fathers to chauffeur their children to school. Finally, while distance to school and several land use measures (e.g., population density, urbanization level, and percentage of renters) are statistically significant, the impact of an objective measure of walkability is quite small. These results suggest that interventions targeting an increase in children’s walking and biking to school should focus on the concerns of mothers, especially as they relate to traffic characteristics.     

Exploratory analysis of Zipf’s universal power law in activity schedules

People’s behavior is governed by extremely complex, multidimensional processes. This fact is well-established in the transportation research community, which has been working on travel behavior (travel demand) models for many years. The number of degrees of freedom in a person’s activity schedule is enormous. However, the frequency of occurrence of day-long activity schedules obeys a remarkably simple, scale-free distribution. This particular distribution has been observed in many natural and social processes and is commonly referred to as Zipf’s law, a power law distribution. This research provides evidence that activity schedules from various study areas exhibit a universal power law distribution. To this end, an elaborate analysis using 13 household travel surveys from diverse study areas discusses the effect of proportional outlier removal on the power law’s exponent value. Statistical evidence is provided for the hypothesis that activity schedules in all these datasets exhibit a power law distribution with a common exponent value. The study proposes that a Zipf power law could be used as an additional dimension within a travel demand model’s validation process. Contrary to other validation methods, no new data is required. The observation of a Zipf power law distribution in the generated schedules appears to be a necessary condition. Additionally, the universal activity schedule distribution might enable the full integration of activity schedules in models based on universal mobility patterns.

     

The role of children’s independent mobility and social media use for face-to-face social interaction with friends

Transportation - Social interaction with friends is an important contributor to children’s well-being, but how transport affects this is rarely studied. For two or more children (not of the...