Empirical Analysis of Factors Affecting the Resolution of Activity-Scheduling Conflicts

This paper describes an analysis undertaken to characterize how individuals resolve conflicts in activity scheduling. The focus is on the case in which a single new activity episode is inserted between two existing consecutively planned activities. The data used in the analysis were collected from students and staff members at a university, with the use of a web-based survey instrument. A range of characteristics, including demographic and socioeconomic variables of the individual, attributes of the observed activity-travel schedule, and attributes of the implied activities can be linked with resolution of the conflict. The results suggest that people tend to resolve schedule conflicts by simultaneously changing the starting time and the duration of the posterior planned activity. Several endogenous relationships have been found among the amount of modifications of these variables.