University of California Transportation Center

Accessibility plays an important role in behavioral decision making. It influences a variety of behavior patterns in time use, resource allocation, and activity allocation of household members. In spite of the recognition of the importance of accessibility in behavioral modeling, appropriate accessibility measures based on time geography are rarely used in time use and activity participation models. This study aims to include accessibility measures in behavioral models and to assess the relationship between accessibility and time use, especially in the context of interaction within households. Accessibility measures based on time geography account for the temporal fixity and spatial settings around important activity pegs for each individual, and therefore provide a unique opportunity to assess temporal and spatial aspects of human behavior. In the analysis reported in this paper Structural Equation Model (SEM) is used to model the complex correlation between individual accessibility and time use and to explain individual and household heterogeneity. We address how accessibility measures has to be treated in behavioral models with different SEM model settings and report the intra-household interaction patterns in time allocation and the importance of individual accessibility in clarifying the impact of land use on travel behavior.