Activity Based Research on Family Joint Tour Generation

Abstract

Given the rapid evolution of urban morphology and the expansion of urban scale, characteristics of residential daily activities become diverse and change constantly. To do more research on residential activity and travel behavior, a better understanding of family joint tour/activity generation, especially the driving-included-mode joint tour generation should be developed, and this is also essential to the policymaking of transportation. Using descriptive statistics, this paper investigates empirical characteristics of family-joint tours’ frequency and patterns. The effect of several attributes, including individual and household socio-demographics, on the household members’ choice behavior is analyzed by cross tab method. Also, a binary logistic regression model is presented to estimate the likelihood that a family generates joint-tours. Using the travel data collected in a suburban district of Beijing, the empirical results show that family size, age distribution, possession of mobile car, and profession structure affect both the generation of family joint tour and the joint-tour type, such as mandatory tour, maintenance tour, and discretionary tour. Future research should focus on the analysis and modeling of travel mode choice of joint-tours’ participants involving more attributes than those listed above.