Learning Objectives Week 2 Flashcards
Explain travel behavior and its complexity
Travel behavior is about doing multiple things in space at different places and how we move from one place to the other. It depends on personal choices, route choice, what time people travel, travel modes and destination choice. This is difficult and complex to measure/capture in research
What are indicators of travel behavior?
Mode choice, trip frequency, VMT, VT vehicle trip frequency, distance walked/cycled
Describe some theories used to explain travel behavior
Time geography theory: observed behaviour depends on activity patterns of people and households within time and space. Emphasis is put on individual choices. Consideration of physical and geographical constraints/opportunities while measuring travel behavior.
Theory of interpersonal behavior: includes unreasoned choices such as habits or negative/positive affects.
Theory of planned behavior: intention is the most important factor of travel behavior. Includes attitudes, preferences, perceptions and social norms
Utility maximization theory: individuals choose the option that has the least transport costs and therefore the most utility for them
How can the results of travel behaviour research help policymaking?
They can show which policies need improvement/fixings. By for example showing that BE can modify and change travel related attitudes and influence activity space dispersion and in turn affect travel behavior, a municipality could fixate their land use policies at specific areas where travel behavior can be influenced. - case of Helsinki metropolitan area.
Which factors influence individual travel behaviour?
BE with the 5 D’s
Density: household/population density or job density
Diversity: land use mix
Design: how is the street designed? Street density/intersection density. Is it attractively designed?
Destination accessibility: local or regional accessibility
Distance to transit: distance to nearest transit stop
Other factors such as
Attitudes
VMT
Distance walked traveled
Social norms
Perceived behavioral control
How is individual travel behaviour explained by an economist?
Reasoned, with rational choices. Alternatives are ordered based on cost-benefit analysis
Best alternative has the least costs
How would individual travel be described as a behavioural scientist/environmental psychologists?
With the theory of planned behaviour. They’d assume that individuals act rationally according to their attitudes, preferences, perceptions, subjective normes and perceived behavioral control
How would travel behavior be described by a geographer
According to time geography. Spatial temporal constraints and opportunities are added. The observed behavior depends on activity patterns of people and households withun their constraints in time and place. Emphasis is put on individual choices
Describe similarities between the three perspectives (economic, behavourial and geographical)
They all focus on the individual traveler and ‘choices’ people make.
The economic perspective as well as the behavioural perspective focus on reasoned and rational choices of the individual traveler.
Describe differences between the three perspectives.
The economic perspective only takes reasoned choices into account while the behavioural and geographical perspective (also) include other choices.
The geographical perspective is the only perspective of the three that adds spatial-temporal constraint-opportunities to travel behaviour, the other two perspectives don’t.
The geographical perspective does not take the ‘reasonability’ of choices into account, while the behavioural and economic perspectives do so.
Geographic perspective does not take utility into account, while the economic perspective does.
How can the knowledge of travel behaviour and perspectives on it, help policymaking?
Research/knowledge of travel behaviour can be a cause to change travel attitudes, which can be made more sustainable by changes in the environment —> sustainable spatial planning and transportstion policies
For example:
Hard policies: e.g. increased land use mix and more frequent transport
Soft policies: incentives such as free transit cards for employees or a parking restrictions etc…
