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Time windows in workers' activity patterns: Empirical evidence from the Netherlands

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Abstract

This paper assumes that activities at the home and work location are important determinants of individuals' paths through time and space. Fixed activities at these locations determine to a large extent the duration and timing of time windows – blocks of time available for participation in travel and out-of-home non-work activities. Taking the time spent at home and at the workplace as a starting point, this paper classifies activity patterns on workdays into six groups with distinct home- and work-stay patterns. For this, data are used from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey. The six clusters vary in terms of the duration and timing of time windows and some of the differences can be explained by commute characteristics, types of non-work activities performed, workers' sociodemographic attributes, and their spatiotemporal environment. However, the impact of sociodemographic and spatiotemporal variables on cluster membership is shown to be weak.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Urban and Regional Research Centre Utrecht (URU), Members of the Netherlands Graduate School of Housing and Urban Research (NETHUR), Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80115, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands (Author for correspondence: E-mail

    Tim Schwanen & Martin Dijst

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  1. Tim Schwanen
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  2. Martin Dijst
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Correspondence to Tim Schwanen.

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Schwanen, T., Dijst, M. Time windows in workers' activity patterns: Empirical evidence from the Netherlands. Transportation 30, 261–283 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023905020890

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