Mobility Choices Research Articles

Coeffects of diet and neonicotinoid exposure on honeybee mobility and food choice

Malnutrition and pesticide exposure are severe factors contributing to the current losses of honeybee colonies. As these stressors often occur combined, we studied the synergistic effects of different diets and pesticide exposure on food choice and mobility of Apis mellifera. We fed beehives with different food sources and exposed the bees to sublethal doses of thiacloprid. After that three different types of honey and pollen were offered in separate choice assays and behaviour towards food was recorded. Thiacloprid significantly affected the food choice in the honey assay, increasing the bees’ preference of polyfloral honey, while pre-pesticide diet had no influence. The pollen choice remained similar regardless of treatments, as bees always preferred polyfloral pollen. Interestingly, pesticide exposure affected bee mobility differently, depending on the previous diet. These results indicate that the diet is an important factor influencing the susceptibility to pesticides.

Student mobility choices in transnational education: impact of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors

ABSTRACT This study investigates the student mobility choices at different stages in transnational education (TNE) and how their choices are shaped by varying level contexts. Combining survey and interview data collected at a US–China TNE programme, the authors found that majority of students did not intend to be mobile during the programme. Rather, they planned to pursue graduate degrees abroad. Further, the majority of students intended to work in China after the completion of their studies. Student mobility choices into, during and after transnational education, were heavily influenced by the macro-level (e.g., labour market, university admission policies) and meso-level (e.g., programme structures) contexts.

Understanding migration aversion using elicited counterfactual choice probabilities

This paper investigates how migration and location choice decisions depend on a large set of location characteristics, with particular focus on measuring the importance and nature of non-monetary costs of moving. We employ a stated-preference approach to elicit respondents’ choice probabilities for a set of hypothetical choice scenarios, using two waves from the NY Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations. Our stated probabilistic choice approach allows us to recover the distribution of individual-level preferences for location and mobility attributes without concerns about omitted variables and selection biases that hamper analyses based on observed mobility choices alone. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for location characteristics and in moving costs, both across and within demographic groups. We find moving costs to be strongly associated with attachment to the current neighborhood and dwelling and to social networks. Our results indicate evidence of sorting into current locations based on preferences for location attributes as well as a strong negative association between respondents’ non-monetary moving costs and their moving expectations and actual mobility decisions.

Interdependence in active mobility adoption: Joint modeling and motivational spillover in walking, cycling and bike-sharing

Active mobility offers an array of physical, emotional, and social well-being benefits. However, with the proliferation of the sharing economy, new nonmotorized means of transport are entering the fold, complementing some existing mobility options while competing with others. The purpose of this research study is to investigate the adoption of three active travel modes—namely walking, cycling, and bikesharing—in a joint modeling framework. The analysis is based on an adaptation of the stages of change framework, which originates from the health behavior sciences. Multivariate ordered probit modeling drawing on U.S. survey data provides well-needed insights into individuals’ preparedness to adopt multiple active modes as a function of personal, neighborhood, and psychosocial factors. The research suggests three important findings. (1) The joint model structure confirms interdependence among different active mobility choices. The strongest complementarity is found for walking and cycling adoption. (2) Each mode has a distinctive adoption path with either three or four separate stages. We discuss the implications of derived stage-thresholds and plot adoption contours for selected scenarios. (3) Psychological and neighborhood variables generate more coupling among active modes than individual and household factors. Specifically, identifying strongly with active mobility aspirations, experiences with multimodal travel, possessing better navigational skills, along with supportive local community norms are the factors that appear to drive the joint adoption decisions. This study contributes to the understanding of how decisions within the same functional domain are related and help to design policies that promote active mobility by identifying positive spillovers and joint determinants.

The Impact of Cross-border Labor Mobility on Real Estate Price Trends: A Natural Experiment

This article evaluate how cross-border labor mobility affects real estate price trends. To overcome the endogeneity of mobility choice, a natural experiment is used: The implementation of the “Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons” (AFMP) between the European Union (EU) and Switzerland, on 1 June 2007. This policy change the eligibility criteria for obtaining a cross-border permit by removing residence restrictions and creates a natural experiment for a difference-in-differences analysis. Based on French administrative data, results show that cross-border labor mobility does not affect house price trends in French border regions. However, the implementation of the AFMP has had a positive impact on the evolution of apartment prices in both the short term (six months) and the medium term (three years). In addition, the evolution of apartment prices shows sensitivity to distance from the border and to the housing quality segment.

Mobility Choices—An Instrument for Precise Automatized Travel Behavior Detection & Analysis

Within the Mobility Choices (MC) project we have developed an app that allows users to record their travel behavior and encourages them to try out new means of transportation that may better fit their preferences. Tracks explicitly released by the users are anonymized and can be analyzed by authorized institutions. For recorded tracks, the freely available app automatically determines the segments with their transportation mode; analyzes the track according to the criteria environment, health, costs, and time; and indicates alternative connections that better fit the criteria, which can individually be configured by the user. In the second step, the users can edit their tracks and release them for further analysis by authorized institutions. The system is complemented by a Web-based analysis program that helps authorized institutions carry out specific evaluations of traffic flows based on the released tracks of the app users. The automatic transportation mode detection of the system reaches an accuracy of 97%. This requires only minimal corrections by the user, which can easily be done directly in the app before releasing a track. All this enables significantly more accurate surveys of transport behavior than the usual time-consuming manual (non-automated) approaches, based on questionnaires.

ESTA: Educating Adolescents in Sustainable Travel Urban Behavior through Mobile Applications Using Motivational Features

This paper proposes the use of motivational features in mobile applications to support adolescents’ education in sustainable travel urban behavior, so that they become more mindful of their environmental impact. To this effect, existing persuasive strategies are adopted, implemented, and integrated into six simulated screens of a prospective mobile application named ESTA, designed for this purpose through a user-centered design process. These screens are then assessed by secondary education pupils, the outcome of which is analyzed and presented in detail. The analysis takes into consideration the possibility for the daily use of ESTA in order for the adolescents to foster an eco-friendly and healthy transit attitude and make more sustainable mobility choices that will follow them throughout their life. The potential effectiveness of ESTA is demonstrated via two use cases: the “Daily Commuting” case is addressed towards adolescents who want to move within their area of residence or neighborhood following their daily routine and activities, while the “Weekend Entertainment” is addressed towards adolescents who want to move using the available public transport modes, encouraging them to adopt greener weekend travel habits.

The role of social networks in relocation induced by climate-related hazards: an empirical investigation in China

ABSTRACT Relocation is an adaptive strategy applied to prevent the threats of climate-related hazards. Thus, understanding the determinants of rural households’ adaptation decisions is crucial when informing policy interventions. This study explores the role of social networks (or peer groups) in geohazard-induced relocation using survey data (N = 516) from Chongqing, China. This study applies an instrument variable (IV) method and a series of robustness checks to confirm the findings. The results indicate that (1) social networks’ willingness to relocate (WTR) increases one’s relocation intention; and (2) people imitate their peers’ mobility choices by consciously observing and learning when facing uncertain climate-related hazard risks. Our findings contribute to comprehending whether and why social networks prompt population relocation decisions and help policymakers exploit the role of peer groups when implementing relocation-related policies in geohazard-prone regions.

Measuring heterogeneous perception of urban space with massive data and machine learning: An application to safety

In the last decade, large street imagery data sets and machine learning developments have allowed increasing scalability of methodologies to understand the effects of landscape attributes on the way they are perceived. However, these new methodologies have not incorporated individual heterogeneity in their analysis, even though differences by gender and other sociodemographic characteristics in the perception of safety and other aspects of landscapes and public spaces have been widely studied in social sciences and urban planning in lower scale studies. In the present study, we combine computational and statistical tools to develop a methodological proposal with high scalability and low implementation cost, which helps to identify and measure heterogeneous perception and its correlation to the presence of elements in the landscape. To achieve this, we implement a survey of perception of public spaces, collecting sociodemographic information of respondents. Then, we fit a discrete choice model to quantify perceptions of these spaces using a parametrization of images that jointly considers semantic segmentation and object detection as input. Our results show heterogeneity in the perception of safety in public spaces according to gender and the observer’s habitual mobility choices. The model is then applied to the city of Santiago, Chile. This produces a map of safety perception for different types of users. The proposed method and the obtained results can be a relevant input for the design of public spaces and decision making in the urban planning process.

Location as an Asset

The location of individuals determines their job and schooling opportunities, amenities, and housing costs. We conceptualize the location choice of individuals as a decision to invest in a “location asset.” This asset has a current cost equal to the location's rent, and a future payoff through better job and schooling opportunities. As with any asset, savers in the location asset transfer resources into the future by going to expensive locations with high future returns. In contrast, borrowers transfer resources to the present by going to cheap locations that offer few other advantages. Holdings of the location asset depend on its comparison to other assets, with the distinction that the location asset is not subject to borrowing constraints. We propose a dynamic location model and derive an agent's mobility choices after experiencing income shocks. We document the investment dimension of location and confirm the core predictions of our theory using French individual panel data from tax returns.

Understanding the public rail quality of service towards commuters’ loyalty behavior in Greater Kuala Lumpur

Sustainability in urban transport mechanisms is a matter of significance in developing economies. Assessing the commuters’ behavior towards urban transport system facilitates the authorities to devise the policies for the safe and advanced choice of mobility. In the Klang Valley of Malaysia, the personal mobility practices have created the challenges of overcrowding the urban roads with automobile cars which resulted in economic, environmental, and infrastructure losses. The public rail transit system is deemed as the preferable choice of solution. To understand the perception of rail transit service attributes from commuters’ viewpoint, a quantitative study was conducted by accumulating Service Quality (SQ) of rail network towards Behavioural Intention or Loyalty (BI) of commuter to use the public transport. Satisfaction (SAT) was added as mediation between SQ and BI. An online survey was conducted that resulted in 141 commuters’ responses. The data were analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and it was found that SQ has a positive and significant impact on SAT and BI. The partial mediation was developed from the path analysis of the trio. The study strengthened the vitality of service quality features for enhancing the loyalty of denizens towards public transport mechanism. The research provided the attributes of transport services to focus on more for commuter integration.

Retirement, Housing Mobility, Downsizing and Neighbourhood Quality – A Causal Investigation

This paper provides the first causal evidence on the impact of retirement on housing choices. Our empirical strategy exploits the discontinuity in the eligibility ages for state pension as an instrument for the endogenous retirement decision and controls for time-invariant individual characteristics. The results show that retirement leads to a statistically significant and sizable increase in the probability of making a residential move or the likelihood of becoming outright homeowners. We also find that individuals downsize both physically and financially and tend to move to better neighbourhoods or closer to the coast upon retirement. We additionally discover that some housing adjustments take place up to 6 years before retirement. Moreover, our results reveal significant heterogeneity in the retirement impact by gender, marital status, education, housing tenue, income and wealth. Within couple households, housing mobility choices are primarily influenced by the wife’s retirement while housing downsizing decisions are only affected by the husband’s retirement. The results suggest that failing to address the endogeneity of retirement often under-states the retirement impact on such housing arrangements.

The Worker-Job Surplus

The worker-job surplus — the sum of the worker's and the employer's net values of an employment relationship — is the object that drives decisions in most matching models of the labor market. In this paper, we develop a theory-based empirical method to determine which of the observable worker and job characteristics impact the worker-job surplus in the data. To do so, we exploit the mobility choices of employed workers. Our method further indicates whether workers sort along those surplus-relevant attributes when searching for jobs. It also provides a test of the commonly used single-index assumption, according to which worker and job heterogeneity can each be summarized by scalar indices. We implement our method on US data using the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the O*NET. The results suggest that a relatively sparse model underlies the data. On the job side, a cognitive and an interpersonal skill requirement impact the surplus along with the (dis)amenity of work duration as well as the workplace size. On the worker side, we find that most of the relevant characteristics are symmetric to the selected job requirements. We reject the existence of a single-index representation of these relevant multi-dimensional worker and job attributes. We then use our results in a new approach to defining the economy's labor submarkets, highlighting a potentially important application of our methodology.

Mobility choices and climate change: Assessing the effects of social norms, emissions information and economic incentives

The potential of psychological and fiscal framing interventions in motivating environmentally responsible behavior is explored in a context of long distance leisure travel. A series of discrete choice experiments is conducted with 789 participants. Framing conditions like information on CO2 emissions, an injunctive and a descriptive norm, fiscal incentives such as a carbon tax, a bonus-malus and a personal carbon trading scheme are tested while controlling the usual travel price-duration tradeoff. Pricing (including internalization of social cost of CO2 through fiscal incentives) has the expected effect of reducing the choice of travelling and hence CO2 emissions. Providing information on CO2 emissions of each transport alternative significantly reduces preferences for the most emitting modes (air) and favors a less emitting mode (train). Framing the fiscal incentive as personal carbon trading adds a moderate incentive to the price effect in reducing air choice.

USE OF AUGMENTED REALITY MEANS IN THE PROCESS OF STUDYING PLANIMETRY IN INSTITUTIONS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

Visualization of educational material in secondary education institutions is one of the successful components of qualitative learning of this material and its further application in the learning process. In a special need of visualization are the school subjects that are difficult to understand and, essentially, do not have a wide practical application at the beginning of the study, that is, subjects of the mathematical cycle. This is why the aim of this study is to analyze the mobile tools that can be used to visualize educational material when studying a geometry course in high school. The study used such research methods as analysis and justification of the choice of mobile augmented reality tools for studying mathematics. As a result of this analysis, two augmented reality tools, Arloon Geometry and Geometry AR, were identified as ones that can be used to visualize educational material and create a problematic situation in order to gain new knowledge in high school geometry lessons. The analysis of these tools made it possible to say that the use of augmented reality tools in geometry lessons creates the conditions for positive emotional interaction between the student and the teacher. Firstly, students understand that a mobile device can be used to organize the learning process, to intensify it and to build a personal learning trajectory. Secondly, the emotional component of learning creates conditions for better memorization of educational material, promotes their mathematical interest, actualizes their creative potential, introduces conditions for finding different ways to solve geometric problems. Thirdly, the ability to find solutions of simple geometric problems with the help of augmented reality instills into the student a positive attitude towards success, and the solution of more complex problems becomes faster and more intense.

A Model for Cost–Benefit Analysis of Privately Owned Vehicle-to-Grid Solutions

Although the increasing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is overall positive for the environment and for the sustainable use of resources, the extra effort that requires purchasing an EV when compared to an equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) competitor make them less appealing from an economical point of view. In addition to that, there are other challenges in EVs (autonomy, battery, recharge time, etc.) that are non-existent in ICE vehicles. Nevertheless, the possibility of providing electricity to the power grid via vehicle-to-grid technology (V2G), along with lower maintenance costs, could prove that EVs are the most economically efficient option in the long run. Indeed, enabling V2G would make EVs capable of saving some costs for their vehicle owners, thus making them a better long-term mobility choice that could trigger deep changes in habits of vehicle owners. This paper describes a cost–benefit analysis of how consumers can make use of V2G solutions, in a way that they can use their vehicle for transport purposes and obtain revenues when injecting energy into the power grid.

Do landholdings affect social mobility in China? A study of rural migrants in Jiangsu

Research on the social mobility of rural migrants in China has focused on the effect of urban jobs. Rural landholdings are considered almost irrelevant, given the minimal revenue generated from agriculture and the ban on rural land transactions. Yet recent decades have seen policy reforms and new development initiatives that have allowed for more profitable land uses and requisition terms, which unlock the potential of rural land. The retention of rural land may affect the lives of rural citizens, including those who have migrated to the city. This paper explores the potential effects of landholdings on the social mobility of rural migrants in Jiangsu with respect to occupation, housing, and income. The possession of rural landholdings is found to be associated with the mobility choices and life outcomes of rural migrants. Rural land, which has not been seen as a main driver of social mobility, may be sorting rural citizens into different localities and social classes.

Unraveling Causes and Consequences of International Retirement Migration to Coastal and Rural Areas in Mediterranean Europe

In a context of aging, low fertility, and progressive slowdown of both internal population mobility and international migration at working age, residential mobility at older ages was regarded as an emerging phenomenon in Mediterranean Europe, a region with increasingly attractive retirement places. The present work discusses the socioeconomic processes (and the environmental impacts) associated with an increasing flow of retirees, which decide to settle from ‘Northern’ countries to Southern Europe, concentrating in coastal districts and in rural countryside. Understanding lifestyle preferences and territorial patterns of residential mobility at older ages allows a refined analysis of short- and medium-term impacts of International Retirement Migration (IRM) on population dynamics in economically growing and declining regions. A refined analysis reveals that destinations of IRM are progressively enlarging from strictly coastal places to a broader set of locations in the rural countryside. Mobility choices among retirees may jeopardize the role of spatial planning, which is increasingly asked to provide specific services for an international, elder population, e.g., stimulating re-use of abandoned rural buildings. Taken as an effective option for rural development, an improved planning and management of local districts attracting and hosting intense flows of residential mobility at older ages is urgent in the present socioeconomic context. A convenient set of policies and a refined taxation system may contribute to reconcile demographic shrinkage with local competitiveness and social cohesion.

Mindsets Set in Concrete? Exploring the Perspectives of Domestic Travellers on New Zealand’s (Auto-)Mobility Culture

Tourism trips in New Zealand are strongly car-dominated. Research suggests that such car use practices do not only emerge from purely rational economic considerations but also result from symbolic and affective motives, institutionalized mobility cultures, and habitualized mobility practices that have developed and materialized in spatial structures over decades. This paper explores the notion of automobility and its influence on the domestic tourism mobilities of Christchurch residents. It does so by applying Q methodology, an inherently mixed method that involves participants structuring statements by their level of agreement, followed by a range of qualitative post-sorting questions. The statements draw on insights from the study of tourism mobilities, mobility cultures and classical mode choice research, allowing this study to provide novel insights into the under-researched field of urban–rural tourism mobility. The juxtaposition of quantitative Q and the qualitative interview results reveals influential factors at the personal, interpersonal, societal/political and infrastructural level. The results then feed into a conceptualisation of influential factors of tourism mobility choices using an embedded, interlinked structure that captures the dynamics of social interactions (i.e., feedback-loops). Policy implications are discussed with regards to possible sustainability pathways in line with New Zealand’s decarbonisation strategy.

Realised pedestrian accessibility of an informal settlement in Jakarta, Indonesia

ABSTRACT To date, little is known about the interplay between transport, land use and the social systems that influence potential and realised accessibility in Southeast Asia. This paper aims to understand these relationships in an informal settlement – a kampong – at the edge of the upscale Menteng district, Jakarta. We applied a mixed-methods approach of (1) a computational street network analysis using space syntax, (2) video analysis to understand travel behaviour and land use and (3) an analysis of street users’ experiences collected through interviews. Our findings indicated that the pedestrian accessibility was not fully realised due to unsupportive land uses and negative perceptions of walking experienced by kampong inhabitants. Marginalised groups became captive pedestrians limited in their mobility choices. This study provides insights into Jakarta’s informal settlements and how urban planning can contribute to sustainable development for inclusive, safe, and resilient cities.