Activity Scheduling Behavior of the Visitors to an Outdoor Recreational Facility Using GPS Data

Abstract

Understanding the decision-making behavior of pedestrians is essential for urban designers and developers in enhancing the commercial and aesthetic value of streets and other urban spaces. However, limited research has been conducted on the activity scheduling behavior of pedestrians. The majority of the studies conducted on outdoor facilities utilize spatial representations by links and are unable to sufficiently represent the highly flexible behavior of pedestrians. This study proposes a new method to discretize data from the global positioning system (GPS) into a two-dimensional grid-based spatial representation with a high spatial resolution. The information regarding the stay at the point of interests (POIs) is extracted from the discretized data, and the activity scheduling model is estimated. The estimation results indicate that the visitors’ attributes, such as the age of the representative and number of children, affect the probability of the activity choice and the time spent at the POI. The probability of choosing the main gate increases in the latter half of the stay, confirming the existence of time pressure. The information on the decision-making behavior of the visitors to a facility, obtained from the GPS data, can be applied to the data-oriented spatial design process to create attractive and lively spaces.