Homes, autos, and travel: household decision chains

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Last Modified
  • March 21, 2019
Creator
  • Shay, Elizabeth
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of City and Regional Planning
Abstract
  • Transportation planners have long recognized a role for the environment in travel behavior, although the most effective techniques for incorporating the environment into travel research remain an open and active area of inquiry. A clearer understanding of the link between the physical environment and travel may inform planning and policy that has the potential to influence household travel behavior and reap tangible benefits in air quality, congestion management, fuel conservation, and other areas. The objectives of this research are 1) Understand how auto ownership and travel behavior vary across physical environments 2) Understand direct and indirect associations between environment and travel behavior, mediated by auto ownership 3) Model and describe differences in environmental representations in travel models This work models household decisions relating to auto ownership and travel, specifically auto ownership, trip generation, and mode choice. Three different representations of the environment inform the models. These include 1) a neighborhood typology (transect) describing a range of development types from the intensely urban city center to rural greenfields; 2) factors used to generate clusters in the transect: walkability, access, agglomeration, industry, and property values; and 3) direct environmental measures: residential density, and distance to transit, commerce, and central business district. Auto ownership relates primarily to household factors. Trips are more sensitive than is the number of autos to the environment, and less sensitive to some household measures. Mode choice is sensitive to environmental measures; specifically, choice of the walk mode is associated with walkable and accessible environments, and with clusters on the more urban end of the transect. Trips differ by purpose, with home-based work trips sensitive to the environment but not socio-demographic variables, but the more discretionary other homebased trips showing the reverse. Comparing across environmental representations, factors prove to be more informative than clusters about autos and travel. The four direct measures generally are not statistically significant. Walk trips differ from drive trips in being sensitive to walkability and accessibility but not to socio-demographic variables. Path analysis shows that indirect effects mediated through autos are swamped by much larger direct associations of the environment with trips and mode choice.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Khattak, Asad Jan
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • October 19, 2010

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