An analysis of evening commute stop-making behavior using repeated choice observations from a multi-day survey

Abstract

This paper examines the number of stops made by individuals during their evening commute. The paper applies a methodological framework that relates stop-making to relevant individual, land-use, and work-related characteristics. The framework also accommodates unobserved variation in stop-making propensity across individuals in intrinsic preferences and in responsiveness to work-related attributes. The empirical analysis uses a sample of repeated choice observations from a multi-day sample of workers drawn from the 1990 San Francisco Bay Area Household Survey. The results indicate that the proposed model provides a superior data fit relative to a model that ignores unobserved variations in stop-making propensity across individuals. The model in this paper also provides important behavioral insights which are masked by the model that disregards unobserved variations.