Impacts of personalized accessibility information on residential location choice and travel behavior

Abstract

This paper investigates the impacts of personalized accessibility information provided to possible relocators on their residential location decision-making process and travel behavior after relocation. An experiment is designed and implemented using a sample of people relocating to Tippecanoe County in Indiana, United States. The participants are randomly allocated to either a control or treatment group. The treatment group participants are provided personalized neighborhood accessibility information before relocation that characterizes the ease of access of each neighborhood for six trip purposes (work, healthcare, social or recreational, restaurants, education, and retail or grocery shopping) using walk, bike, transit, or car mode. The control group participants are not given this information. Surveys are designed to capture participants’ self-reported residential location decision-making process and travel behavior before and after relocation. Simultaneous equation models are estimated to capture the potential interrelationship between the accessibility of participants’ residential neighborhood and their self-reported weekly driving time after relocation, and the factors that affect them. Descriptive statistics comparing behavior before and after relocation, and model estimation results, show that personalized accessibility information can potentially make relocators more informed about travel-related information, and assists them in selecting a residence that better addresses their travel needs based on higher accessibility to potential destinations. Ultimately, this information makes it more likely that they will travel less using car (about 10% less weekly driving time, on average) and use walk or transit mode more (about 10% and 5% more frequently on average, respectively) to their destinations.