Waiting, whether for services, for someone, or for something, is an inescapable part of life. This paper addresses a gap in the waiting time literature by examining previously sparsely studied relationships between individual- and travel-related characteristics and attitudes toward waiting using a revealed preference dataset of Northern California commuters (N = 2617). Correlational analyses, followed by a trivariate seemingly unrelated regression equations model, are developed for three waiting attitudinal constructs: general tolerance toward waiting, and attitudes toward equipped and expected waiting. Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, time use perceptions and preferences, personality traits, multitasking attitudes (polychronicity), commute preferences and expectations, and general attitudes (e.g. pro-technology) are all seen to have significant effects on waiting attitudes. As this survey was executed on commuters, it also facilitates a unique simultaneous exploration of travel and wait time attributes, time uses that are often similarly viewed in day-to-day life. From this perspective, we see that longer commute times and distances are correlated with negative attitudes toward waiting, while commuters with pro-transit, pro-density, and pro-active transportation attitudes tend to have positive attitudes toward waiting. Additionally, we see that those with preferences for multitasking in general or at their jobs can tolerate waiting better. Overall, this study constitutes a distinctive contribution to the waiting time literature, capitalizing on a rich dataset to make important connections between related time uses and a multitude of other variables—key among them polychronicity, with its potential ability to reduce the negative perception and experience of waiting. Findings from this study may also benefit transportation and other service providers by facilitating an understanding of how various consumer groups/demographics view waiting, thus enabling providers to better cater to diverse needs/populations.

Travel-based multitasking, or the performance of activities while traveling, is more feasible than ever before, as the expanding availability of shared ride services and increasing vehicle automation coincide with the ubiquity of portable information and communication technology devices. However, the question of whether, and if so, how these increasingly blurred boundaries between activities are truly helping rather than hurting us is not presently well-understood. Using an attitudinally-rich travel survey of Northern California commuters (N ≈ 2500), we develop a conceptual and empirically-based framework for studying benefits and disadvantages of travel-based multitasking. Through latent variable models of reported benefits and disadvantages of activities conducted on a recent commute, we identify constructs associated with hedonic and productive benefits, and with affective and cognitive disadvantages. This empirically-developed framework informs the definition of binary variables indicating the presence/absence of each construct for a given traveler on the commute in question. We then present two bivariate binary probit models that examine the effects of person and trip attributes such as personality traits, chosen mode, commute preferences, and activities conducted while traveling on the presence of those benefits and disadvantages, respectively. Notably, we find evidence that conditions/activities that may facilitate multitasking benefits can also simultaneously yield disadvantages; for example, several activities – conspicuously including talking on or otherwise using a phone – increase the probability of receiving benefits while also increasing the probability of experiencing cognitive disadvantages. This finding resonates with the general multitasking literature, and empirically corroborates the suggestion that travel-based multitasking may not uniformly increase trip utility.

Considerable recent work suggests that Millennials’ behaviors may be converging with those of Generation X as they enter later life stages, but few have investigated whether attitudes, which are often strong predictors of behavior, are undergoing the same convergence. In this study, we analyze the existing generational gap in four transportation-related attitudes (currently pro-urban, long-term pro-urban, pro-car ownership, and pro-environment), and examine the differential effects of other characteristics, including life-stage variables, on these attitudinal gaps. We apply the threefold Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method to a statewide (weighted) sample of 1029 Millennials and 946 Generation Xers from California to unravel these effects. The method distinguishes among: (1) effects due to the cohorts having different characteristics (endowments); (2) effects due to those characteristics having different influences on attitudes (coefficients); and (3) the interaction of those two effects. We observe that Millennials’ attitudes: (1) differ from those of Generation X only by small, albeit statistically significant, amounts on average; and (2) are closer to those of Generation X as they gain on a host of life-stage variables such as marital status, income, and education. For example, if Millennials were married, employed, and earning higher incomes at the same rates as Generation X (but retaining their own model coefficients), the generational gap in the currently pro-urban attitude would be reduced by 24%. This study brings an econometric approach to the study of generational divides in transportation-related attitudes, with findings suggesting that Millennials might be leaving part of their uniqueness behind as they enter later life stages.