Spatiotemporal change in duration of households with every member out-of-home: a case in Kumamoto, Japan

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nobody-at-home situations can cause several problems, such as home-delivery failures and burglaries. A recent study demonstrated temporal profiles of households with every member out-of-home (HEMO) situation by using household travel surveys. However, the spatial distribution of HEMO and its transition were not examined, and the effect of household attributes on HEMO was not analyzed statistically. In this study, the spatiotemporal variation in HEMO duration was investigated to address this gap, and the duration was analyzed using two econometric models. The 1984, 1997, and 2012 household travel surveys from Kumamoto, Japan, were used for the spatiotemporal visualization. In addition, the Tobit model and time allocation model were developed to statistically determine the reason for the variation in duration. The average HEMO duration increased by more than 1 h between 1984 and 2012. The downtown area revealed a longer HEMO duration, and the area with a longer duration expanded to rural areas between 1984 and 2012. The estimated econometric models revealed the statistical impacts of household attributes on HEMO duration. The HEMO duration of single-person households with a worker or student was long, and that of households with a working husband and homemaker wife was short. The spatiotemporal distribution of HEMO durations presented in this paper has the potential to be used in future urban studies, including those on the logistics of home-delivery, home-visiting survey design, crime prevention, and energy research.