The role of peer effects and the built environment on individual travel behavior

While urban planners and transportation geographers have long emphasized the importance of social influences on individual travel behavior, many challenges remain to bridge the gap between complex conceptual frameworks and operational behavioral models. Improving the ability of models to forecast activity-travel behavior can provide greater insights into urban planning issues. This paper proposes a new model framework by evaluating how individual travel behavior is influenced by inter- and intra-household interactions. The built environment, land-use mix, and social interactions influence household member choices among different transport modes. We propose a spatial multivariate Tobit specification that allows each individual to face a set of potential destinations and transport modes and takes into consideration the travel behavior of other household members and nearby neighbors. Using the Greater Cincinnati Household Travel Survey, we analyzed more than 37,000 trips made by 1968 individuals located in Hamilton County in Cincinnati, Ohio. Results reveal that social influences and the built environment have a strong impact on the willingness to walk and to cycle.

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