Evolutions of households with every member out-of-home across Japanese cities from 1987 to 2015

Abstract

Despite the nobody-at-home situation having induced several problems, including home burglaries and home-delivery failure, this situation is not comprehensively understood yet. A recent study has examined and developed temporal profiles of households with the situation of every member out-of-home (HEMO) or nobody-at-home, using household travel surveys. However, the variation of HEMO across different cities over several years remains unclear. This study performs a comparative analysis of the HEMO and individual out-of-home (IO) rates across Japanese cities over several years by using the Nationwide Person Trip Survey data. The result obtained by a single-year (2015) data revealed that the HEMO and IO rates were higher in cities than in towns and villages. The municipalities were then classified according to the temporal HEMO profiles. The results obtained by multi-year (1987, 1992, 2005, and 2015) data revealed that the variation of the HEMO rate was marginal in comparison to the reduction in the IO rate during 1987–2015. The minimal variation of HEMO was attributed to the opposing effects of the changes in the household size distribution and the changes in the HEMO rate for households of each size. The temporal profiles of the HEMO rates, obtained by the multi-year data, were also classified. Their transition patterns were demonstrated and analyzed. Household travel survey data can thus be used to plot temporal profiles, which can be useful for analyzing and understanding cities.