Time allocation to discretionary in-home, out-of-home activities and to trips

Abstract

The present work analyzes the allocation of time to discretionary in-home and out-of-home activities separately from the trips they generate, so as to capture the effects that the exogenous variables characterizing the transport system and the individual's and household socio-economic characteristics have on time allocation to discretionary trips. A Nested-Tobit model has been used, which is a discrete-continuous model with limited dependent variable. The model's structure embodies a hierarchical sequence of two equations that describe how the individuals choose to allocate their discretionary time between in- and out-of-home activities (activity programme) and between trips and activities (activity scheduling). The empirical results assign greater descriptive power to mandatory non-work activities for the trade-off between in-home and out-of-home activities, but the number of trips and the time allocated to mandatory trips were the two activity variables that most influenced the time to be allocated to discretionary trips.