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A structural equation model based analysis of non-workers’ activity-travel behaviour from a city of a developing country

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Abstract

This paper presents an empirical analysis of non-workers’ activity-travel behaviour from Bangalore city, India. The paper builds a causal model—to describe the relationships among socio-demographics, activity-participation, and travel behaviour of non-workers—following structural equation modelling methodology. The results indicate that in-home maintenance activity-duration drives the time allocation decisions of non-workers. The model also shows the presence of ‘time-budget’ effects i.e., excess travel time cuts into in-hhome discretionary activity duration, implying the trade-off between daily travel time and in-home discretionary activity duration. The out-of-home activity durations of non-workers are found to be insensitive to travel time—an important finding of this research. The model also suggests that mixed residential development reduce travel distance and indirectly contribute to more trips. An indirect effect of mixed residential development on daily travel distance offsets the direct effect, which leads to a limited total effect of this variable on travel distance. The basic model was expanded further by separating the time spent on others’ activity (children and elders) from in-home maintenance activity duration. The stable model reveals that the time spent on others’ activity also influences in-home and out-of-home activities, and travel behaviour. This indicates that the time spent on others’ activity is an important time allocation of its own.

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Notes

  1. Activity-travel behaviour of school-going children can be analysed and modelled in a similar framework as that for workers. See Bowman et al. (1998) for more details.

  2. According to Bangalore Development Authority (2007), main features of such areas are: “…where employment, shopping and residential land uses will be integrated in a compact urban form, at higher development intensities and will be pedestrian-oriented and highly accessible by public transit”.

  3. The framework in Fig. 1 was initially estimated with tour-level travel behaviour indicators (no. of stops/tour, daily tour distance etc.). However, the model fit was poor and many of the relationships were counter intuitive.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the officials from Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in arranging the land use data of Bangalore city. The suggestions of the editor and the three anonymous reviewers have helped us to improve an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, Karnataka, 560012, India

    M. Manoj & Ashish Verma

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Correspondence to Ashish Verma.

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Manoj, M., Verma, A. A structural equation model based analysis of non-workers’ activity-travel behaviour from a city of a developing country. Transportation 44, 241–269 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-015-9636-8

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