A Latent Class Accelerated Hazard Model of Social Activity Duration

Over the past decade, activity scheduling processes have gained increasing attention in the field of transportation research. However, still little is known about the scheduling of social activities and the influence of the characteristics of the persons with whom these activities take place. This paper contributes to this knowledge. We analyze how the duration of social activities is influenced by personal and household characteristics, social activity characteristics and characteristics of the contacted person(s). To that end, a latent class accelerated hazard model is estimated, based on social interaction diary data that was collected in the Netherlands in 2008. Findings suggest that especially the social activity characteristics and the characteristics of the contacted person are highly significant in explaining social activity duration. This shows that social activities should not be considered as a homogenous set of activities and it underlines the importance of including the social context in travel-behavior models. Moreover, the results indicate that there is a substantial amount of latent heterogeneity across the population. The three latent classes show different constants, with considerably shorter durations for one of the classes, and different effects for all three categories of explanatory variables.

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