Exploring interdependencies in students' vacation portfolios using association rules

Abstract

The transition into adulthood is usually associated with changes and events, accompanied by developments in young people's social status and consequently, some changes in travel and transport use. This makes the students' segment highly relevant for both marketing companies and policy-makers. The goal of this paper is to explore the overall vacation portfolio of decisions of students. Data about vacation history in terms of the long holidays of a sample of 211 students was used. To avoid any limiting a priori statistical assumptions in the analysis, the existence of any interdependencies in the vacation portfolios and their covariates are explored in this study using Association Rules Mining. Results indicate that, in addition to expected associations between socio-demographics characteristics, student's vacation choices are very heterogeneous. © 2012 International University College. All rights reserved.