Empirical examination of neighborhood context of individual travel behaviors

In recent years, recognition of the importance of neighborhood context has produced a growing body of geographic research. When making their activity-travel decisions, individuals are restricted in different ways. In particular, individual choice behavior is often influenced by a neighborhood environment and a built environment. This study using the 2010 household trip survey demonstrated the effectiveness of incorporating multilevel mechanisms in various contexts of activity-travel behavior by comparing with traditional models. The analysis shows that one individual's activity participation patterns with respect to mode choice, trip count, trip distance, and trip time, under a variety of spatio-temporal constraints, tend to be affected by shared characteristics of neighborhoods. The results also imply that neighborhood travel behaviors are significantly influenced by neighborhood characteristics requiring policy makers to consider not only individual characteristics but surrounding environment.