Examining temporal effects of lifecycle events on transport mode choice decisions

Abstract

This paper describes the first results of a study on the impact of events on transport mode choice decisions. An Internet-based survey was designed to collect data concerning seven structural lifecycle events. In addition, respondents answered questions about personal and household characteristics, possession and availability of transport modes and their current travel behaviour. In total, 710 respondents completed the online survey. The complexity of transport mode choice is modelled using a Bayesian Decision Network. This paper focuses only on the time influence of events on transport mode choice decisions. We assume that people change or at least reconsider their behaviour after a structural lifecycle event, at times directly after experiencing a change and at times only after a period of time. We estimated a multinomial choice model to estimate the effect of these structural events, and in particular of the length of the time elapsed, on transport mode choice. © 2007 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.