Companionship for Leisure Activities: An Empirical Analysis Using the American Time Use Survey

The activity-based travel–modeling paradigm recognizes that individuals undertake activity and travel not only independently but also together with other household and nonhousehold members. It has also been argued that the desire for interaction with other people is an important stimulus for activity–travel generation and therefore warrants treatment in travel–demand models. However, Axhausen (2005) notes that this important social dimension of activity–travel behavior is not accommodated in travel modeling. Further, the modeling of interpersonal interdependencies in activity–travel patterns is necessary for realistic forecasts of travel patterns under alternate socioeconomic–technological scenarios and due to changes in land use and transportation system characteristics. The goal of this study is to contribute to the understanding of activities and travel pursued by individuals jointly with household and nonhousehold members. Toward that end, there are two major tasks. First, an analysis is undertaken to determine the extent to which each activity type is pursued jointly. Further, this analysis aims to illustrate the differences in the companion-type choices (household versus nonhousehold members) across the activity types. The next task is focused on leisure activities. The motivation for this focus is that, among all activity types, the desire for companionship for leisure is likely to be highest. Specifically, models are developed to examine the impacts of demographic characteristics, day of the week, and activity episode durations on the choice of companion type. This paper is organized as follows. The section following the introduction describes the data used in this analysis. The empirical results are presented in the section that follows. The final section provides a summary and highlights the insights from this study.