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Considering that most working adults spend nearly half their waking time at work, creating a supportive built environment around workplaces could be a feasible approach to maintain adequate levels of physical activity. However, the extent to which the built environment around workplaces influences walking behaviors in working adults remains unclear. Using survey data of 1009 full-time employees in Shanghai, China, this study assessed the nonlinear relationships between the built environment characteristics around workplaces and three domains of walking behaviors (commuting, utilitarian, and recreational walking). Using gradient boosting decision trees, our results showed that the built environment around workplaces is crucial for higher levels of walking behaviors, but built environment features tended to have distinctive associations with different domains of walking behaviors. Specifically, the number of physical activity facilities was positively associated with all three domains of walking behaviors, while a high floor area ratio was negatively associated with different domains of walking behaviors to some extent. Furthermore, several built environment characteristics, such as land use entropy, street view greenery, distance from home to the city center, and distance between the city center and workplaces had distinctive associations with different domains of walking behaviors. The findings of this study could provide nuanced guidance for creating pedestrian-friendly environments around workplaces to promote walking behaviors and overall physical activity levels in the working population.

Commuting imposes opportunity costs on travelers since those with long commutes have less time to participate in other activities. This paper examines how commute duration is associated with activity patterns. It utilizes a two-day time use survey administered in the United Kingdom in 2014 and 2015. Focusing on full-time employees and controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, we regress time spent engaging in 22 different activities on commute duration using OLS and Cragg two-part hurdle modeling. We separately test the effects of commute duration on activity participation for men versus women and for single persons versus persons in couples. We also report the subjective well-being (SWB), specifically the hedonic affect, associated with these activities as determined by using fixed-effects panel regression. The estimations suggest that commutes are associated with time constraints and entail trade-offs, with longer commutes being associated with significantly less time engaging in most of our activities including sleep, cooking, housework, shopping/accessing services, arts/entertainment activities, TV/music time, computer games and other computer use, visiting with others, sports/exercise/outdoor activities, hobbies, volunteering, and non-work travel. Those with longer commutes are found to tend to engage in more of two activities: work and eating out. The activities those with longer commutes tend to forego run the gamut from high-SWB to low-SWB. Given that the lowest-SWB activity in our sample is commuting itself, it appears as if the substitution of nearly any activity for commuting may bring emotional benefits. In all, the results suggest that longer commutes are associated with significant emotional costs.

With the continuous advancement of (mobile) ICT devices and applications, their impact on travel, activities and time use becomes more diverse. This holds in particular for apps developed for mobile devices (smartphones). In this paper, we argue that the effect of ICT on travel and activities should be analysed at the level of a single specific device or application, rather than for broad classes of ICT devices. We propose activity theory as a framework to analyse the impact of smartphone apps on travel and activities. Activity theory describes how subjects apply tools (such as apps) to work on an object and achieve an outcome that is in line with the subject’s motive. The application of the tool is embedded in an activity system which includes a community, formal and informal rules and in which a division of labour exists. We apply activity theory to analyse the effects of Whatsapp and travel feedback apps, based on existing literature about these apps. The analyses suggest that the activity systems of each app differ greatly in terms of object, motive, outcomes, community and rules, with implications for their use and impact. Both apps have an impact on travel, but differ with respect to whether this effect is intentional. For both apps contradictions in the activity system can be identified, which may give rise to further development of the activity system. These seem, however, to be largest for travel feedback apps. Based on our exploration, we argue that quantitative research on the impact of apps should be complemented by qualitative research based on activity theory. In particular, activity theory may help to gain a better understanding of underlying mechanism by which apps influence travel, to strengthen the theoretical underpinning and interpretation of the results of quantitative research and to explore changes in the development and use of apps and their impact on travel behaviour.

BACKGROUND It is unclear why some physical activity (PA) mobile health (mHealth) interventions successfully promote PA whereas others do not. One possible explanation is the variety in PA mHealth interventions—not only do interventions differ in the selection of persuasive strategies but also the design and implementation of persuasive strategies can vary. However, limited studies have examined the different designs and technical implementations of strategies or explored if they indeed influenced the effectiveness of the intervention. OBJECTIVE This scoping review sets out to explore the different technical implementations and design characteristics of common and likely most effective persuasive strategies, namely, goal setting, monitoring, reminders, rewards, sharing, and social comparison. Furthermore, this review aims to explore whether previous mHealth studies examined the influence of the different design characteristics and technical operationalizations of common persuasive strategies on the effectiveness of the intervention to persuade the user to engage in PA. METHODS An unsystematic snowball and gray literature search was performed to identify the literature that evaluated the persuasive strategies in experimental trials (eg, randomized controlled trial, pre-post test). Studies were included if they targeted adults, if they were (partly) delivered by a mobile system, if they reported PA outcomes, if they used an experimental trial, and when they specifically compared the effect of different designs or implementations of persuasive strategies. The study methods, implementations, and designs of persuasive strategies, and the study results were systematically extracted from the literature by the reviewers. RESULTS A total of 29 experimental trials were identified. We found a heterogeneity in how the strategies are being implemented and designed. Moreover, the findings indicated that the implementation and design of the strategy has an influence on the effectiveness of the PA intervention. For instance, the effectiveness of rewarding was shown to vary between types of rewards; rewarding goal achievement seems to be more effective than rewarding each step taken. Furthermore, studies comparing different ways of goal setting suggested that assigning a goal to users might appear to be more effective than letting the user set their own goal, similar to using adaptively tailored goals as opposed to static generic goals. This study further demonstrates that only a few studies have examined the influence of different technical implementations on PA behavior. CONCLUSIONS The different implementations and designs of persuasive strategies in mHealth interventions should be critically considered when developing such interventions and before drawing conclusions on the effectiveness of the strategy as a whole. Future efforts are needed to examine which implementations and designs are most effective to improve the translation of theory-based persuasive strategies into practical delivery forms.

This article investigates the impact of the running environment on perceived satisfaction, restoration, and running participation based on a questionnaire distributed to 1,581 novice runners. The most frequently experienced impediments on running routes are poor lighting, unleashed dogs, and encounters with cyclists and cars. Regression analyses reveal that attractiveness and restorativeness are positively associated with the quality of the running surface and running in parks or outside towns and negatively by running on public roads in town, by running in larger cities (>250,000 inhabitants), and by other road users. However, attractiveness and restorativeness of running routes play only a minor role in the decision of how frequently to run. Practical considerations (proximity, threats) appear to have a larger impact on running frequency. Importantly, the most frequently mentioned impediments (poor lighting, cars, unleashed dogs) do not affect running frequency, whereas infrequent impediments (threats by other people) significantly affect running frequency.

Previous studies on the association between the availability of sports facilities and sports participation have neglected the influence of subjective constraints that individuals experience with regard to sports participation. This paper investigates to what extent constraints experienced by sports participants are associated with their spatial circumstances and whether these subjective constraints or objective spatial circumstances have a greater impact on sports frequency. Based on a survey among 776 adults in urban and rural municipalities in the Netherlands, regression analyses revealed that constraints were related to neighbourhood liveability and distance to indoor sports facilities and swimming pools. Time constraints had a strong negative effect on sports frequency, but the effect of distance to indoor facilities and swimming pools was even more important. Our results furthermore indicate a growing need for flexibility in the spatiotemporal organization of sports activities and an increased import...

A considerable amount of studies have indicated that people to some extent select themselves in specific neighbourhoods allowing them to travel in their desired way. Although a lot of studies analysed the degree to which travel preferences affect the residential location choice, few studies looked at the effect of a residential relocation on people's travel behaviour and attitudes. A new residential context has the potential to disrupt previous travel choices and could potentially change people's attitudes. This study – using 1539 recently relocated residents in the city of Ghent (Belgium) – analyses self-reported changes in mode frequency and travel attitudes after a relocation, and uses a cohort approach to look at mode frequency and attitudes at different times after the relocation took place. Results suggest that (i) travel attitudes often influence the residential location choice, and (ii) both travel attitudes and travel mode choice change after a relocation, albeit in different ways depending on the current (urban versus suburban) and previous residential neighbourhood (more/equally/less urbanised). This study also suggests that a (possible) dissonance between travel attitudes and the residential neighbourhood is partly a temporal situation, as attitudes can gradually change in accordance with the new residential environment.

In de ruimtelijke wetenschappen is sport traditioneel een ondergeschoven kindje. Gezien de effecten van sport op gezondheid, welzijn, veiligheid, sociale interactie en uitsluiting kan geografisch onderzoek een belangrijke bijdrage leveren aan inzicht in de ruimtelijke determinanten en uitkomsten van sportdeelname. Dit artikel bespreekt kansrijke richtingen in geografisch sportonderzoek.

Events in a sequence may each be evaluated as good or bad. We propose that such good-bad evaluations evoke emotional responses that change current mood. A model of recurrent updating of current mood is developed and compared to a model of how a sequence of events evoking emotional responses is evaluated retrospectively. In Experiment 1, 149 undergraduates are presented sequences of lottery outcomes with a fixed probability of losing or winning different amounts of money. Ratings of current mood are made after the sequence. Retrospective evaluations are either made after the ratings of current mood or, in a control condition, when no ratings of current mood are made. The results show an expected effect on current mood of the valence of the end of the sequence. The results are less clear in showing an expected beginning effect on the retrospective evaluations. An expected beginning effect on retrospective evaluations is found in Experiment 2 in which 41 undergraduates are first asked to remember the different amounts of money, then to evaluate the sequence as lottery outcomes.

This paper explores the usefulness of cumulative prospect theory (CPT), an inductive–descriptive model for how people make choices with a priori unknown consequences, in the context of travelers’ coping with unreliable transport networks through the estimation of coefficients characterizing CPT’s value and weighting functions. Attention is directed toward employed parents’ trips to collect their child(ren) from the nursery at the end of workday because of parents’ strong sensitivity to the possibility of late arrivals there. Analysis of a stated response experiment about parents’ coping with unreliable transport networks en route to the nursery provides further evidence for a series of violations of the axioms underlying expected utility theory (EUT) – a deductive–normative model of decision-making under uncertainty that is widely used in transportation studies. The results also show that linkages exist between respondents’ everyday life and their responses in the stated response experiment and, by implication, the shape of CPT’s value function. It is therefore concluded that analytical frameworks for describing activity-travel behavior in situations of unreliability, variability and uncertainty should be both psychologically and socially realistic.

This article investigates the influence of both mobility events and household events on modal shift decision for bicycle commuting using data collected from a retrospective survey in the Netherlands. The results from a mixed-logit analysis illustrate the influence of several life events on commute modal shifts in addition to changes in commute time and sociodemographic variables. Job characteristics such as changes in work status and employer, mobility resource, long-term mobility events, and household events are seen to influence commuting decision by bicycle.

Objectives This paper proposes a conceptual model of the complex relationships between travel behaviour and health. In addition it gives a research agenda providing an overview of challenges for future research. Methods We review the relevant literature in the areas of public health, land use and transportation that address issues related to health and travel and their underlying mechanisms. We do not aim to give a full review of the literature but to underpin the conceptual model. Results and conclusions We conclude that research can easily come to the ‘wrong’ conclusions if the complex causal relationships that exist between relevant factors are overlooked. In particular, ignoring contradictory effects for specific socio-demographic groups, (residential) self-selection effects, substitutions of different forms of activity, and reverse causalities may lead to overestimation of the effect of policies. For example, travel-related physical activity might interact with other physical activity, self-selection effects may influence the complex relationships between travel behaviour and health, and people׳s health may influence their walking or cycling behaviour. Based on the conceptual model we present a research agenda. A first research challenge is to explore the combined effect of travel behaviour related determinants for health effects (physical activity, air pollution intake, injuries, and subjective well-being) on health. A second challenge is exploring the interactions between travel-related physical activity and other physical activity. Thirdly, the importance of attitudes and attitude formation, specifically health-related attitudes and self-selection processes related to travel behaviour, is an important research topic. Fourthly, it is important to explore the relationship between cycling levels and injury risks, because risks seem to be correlated with cycling levels: the more people cycle, the lower the injury risks. Fifthly, we think it is important to study the relevance of walking and cycling related self-selection effects. A sixth challenge relates to transport innovations.

Leisure travel makes up a very significant part of daily travel and therefore needs to be considered in any travel demand management or general land use and transportation policy. Yet, research into leisure mobility has tended to ignore important aspects of leisure travel, such as its joint character, i.e. its dependence on the participation of other people and the important part played by characteristics of the sites where leisure activities are conducted, as well as the link between leisure activities and the dynamics in people’s social networks. This paper introduces a relational approach to leisure activities and travel, which studies joint leisure activities and travel within the webs of relations – the assemblages of people, artefacts, as well as ideas, emotions and other immaterial phenomena – in which they are situated. Two such webs deserve particular attention: the social ties that people have with others and particular configurations of elements (buildings, infrastructure, nature, people, etc.) that collectively make up ‘places’. A key idea of our approach is that two-way connections exists between single instances of leisure and the longer term, structural phenomena of the social tie and place. We expand the relational approach in relation to the decision whether or not to engage in joint leisure and the location choice. For each dimension, we review relevant literature and elaborate the relational approach in terms of the relations among people, artefacts, other forms of materiality and the ideas, norms, affects that hold them together and circulate between them.

While most models of location decisions of firms are based on the principle of utility maximizing behavior, the present study assumes that location decisions are just part of business cycle models, in which location is considered along other business decisions. The business model results in a series of location requirements and these are matched against location characteristics. Given this theoretical perspective, the modeling challenge then becomes how to find the match between firm types and the set of location characteristics using observations of the spatial distribution of firms. In this paper, several Bayesian classifier networks are compared in terms of their performance, using a large data set collected for the Netherlands. Results demonstrate that by taking relationships between predictor variables into account the Bayesian classifiers can improve prediction accuracy compared to commonly used decision tree. From a substantive point of view, our results indicate that different sets of urban characteristics and accessibility requirements are relevant to different office types as reflected in the spatial distribution of these office firms.

Developments in transportation and information and communication technologies (ICTs) have facilitated the process labeled activity fragmentation. In this process, the weakened associations between activity, time, and place that ICTs made possible facilitate the disintegration of activities into smaller subtasks, which can then be performed at different times and at different locations. However, until now discussion of the fragmentation of activity hypothesis has been limited to the theoretical domain and largely absent from the empirical domain. In the study reported here we connect both domains by (1) developing a set of measures of activity fragmentation and (2) applying them to study the fragmentation of the activity of paid work using combined activity, travel, and communica- tion diary data collected in the Netherlands in 2007 in order to assess the performance of these indicators. The results show that the indicators differentiate between the multiple facets of activity fragmentation (such as the number, dispersion, and configuration of fragments). The preliminary analyses also suggest that, although the temporal fragmentation of activities appears to be or to have become more common, spatial activity fragmentation is rather limited.

Previous research demonstrates an impact on subjective well-being (SWB) of affect associated with routine performance of out-of-home activities. A primary aim of the present study is to investigate whether satisfaction with daily travel has a positive impact on SWB, either directly or indirectly through facilitating the performance of out-of-home activities. A secondary aim is to determine whether emotional-symbolic or instrumental reasons for car use results in higher satisfaction with daily travel than other travel modes. A survey of a population-based sample of 1,330 Swedish citizens included measures of car access and use, satisfaction with daily travel, satisfaction with performance of out-of-home routine activities, and affective and cognitive SWB. The results confirmed that the effect on affective and cognitive SWB of satisfaction with daily travel is both direct and indirect via satisfaction with performance of activities. Percent weekly car use had a small effect on satisfaction with daily travel and on affective SWB, although fully mediating the effect of satisfaction with performance of the activities. This suggests that car use plays a minor role for satisfaction with daily travel and its effect on SWB. This role may be larger if investigated after a forced reduced car use.

Analysis of household activity scheduling has to date been limited to one-day periods. This paper extends the study of household task allocation to a one-week period. Using a one-week time use survey held under couples in The Netherlands in 2003, the paper proposes indicators for measuring task allocation on a daily and weekly scale and investigates to what extent role expectations, work status and indicators of time pressure influence task allocation patterns. The outcomes suggest that egalitarian role expectations and higher female work status lead to a more balanced allocation of work and households tasks between spouses. More traditional role views and increased time pressure lead to more specialisation and inequality between spouses. Interestingly, households under time pressure apply day-to-day specialisation to arrive at balanced weekly allocation totals.

This paper provides an example of the application of an individual space–time activity-based model (ISTAM) to the simulation of the transmission of infectious disease in Eemnes, a city in The Netherlands. Four questions were addressed: (i) how to build the whole population at the city level, (ii) how to build the structure of the activity bundles for the city, (iii) how to assign daily activity patterns to each individual, and (iv) how to simulate within-AB transmission. The model was calibrated and examples of simulation results such as dynamics of the population during a whole day, infection distribution and network analysis are presented.

This paper develops a model of activity and trip scheduling that combines three elements that have to date mostly been investigated in isolation: the duration of activities, the time-of-day preference for activity participation and the effect of schedule delays on the valuation of activities. The model is an error component discrete choice model, describing individuals’ choice between alternative workday activity patterns. The utility function is formulated in a flexible way, applying a bell-shaped component to represent time-of-day preferences for activities. The model was tested using a 2001 data set from the Netherlands. The estimation results suggest that time-of-day preferences and schedule delays associated with the work activity are the most important factors influencing the scheduling of the work tour. Error components included in the model suggest that there is considerable unobserved heterogeneity with respect to mode preferences and schedule delay.

We argue that people think more about the short-term individual benefits of personal motorized travel than the long-term societal costs. One explanation is that people are more concerned about their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of their close relatives than the well-being of unknown others. Another explanation is that people have less knowledge of the long-term societal costs than of the short-term individual benefits. Research findings documenting long-term societal costs may increase this knowledge if accurately conveyed by governments, mass media, producers and providers of travel services, and opinion leaders. We identify several obstacles to such an accurate dissemination of research findings that need to be removed.

Before you lies the 2006 TRB (Transportation Research Board) Special Issue of Transportation comprising selected papers presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the TRB in sessions sponsored by the Travel Behavior and Values committee on activity-travel decision processes. We are pleased to serve as editors of this Special Issue. The Special Issue is the outcome of a partnership between Transportation and the TRB, a division of the National Research Council, which serves the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in the United States. This partnership builds on TRB’s commitment to build bridges that help disseminate cutting edge research and state-of-the-art solutions in transportation to a worldwide audience. It involves two standing committees of TRB’s Division A (Technical Activities): the Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values ABD10) and the Committee on Travel Demand Forecasting (ADB40).

Research suggests that for many people happiness is being able to make the routines of everyday life work, such that positive feelings dominate over negative feelings resulting from daily hassles. In line with this, a survey of work commuters in the three largest urban areas of Sweden show that satisfaction with the work commute contributes to overall happiness. It is also found that feelings during the commutes are predominantly positive or neutral. Possible explanatory factors include desirable physical exercise from walking and biking, as well as that short commutes provide a buffer between the work and private spheres. For longer work commutes, social and entertainment activities either increase positive affects or counteract stress and boredom. Satisfaction with being employed in a recession may also spill over to positive experiences of work commutes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11205-012-0003-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Travel decision making is increasingly regarded as a highly complex process in which individuals not only decide about frequency of trips, travel modes, and routes, but also about activity participation and sequencing and timing and duration of activities and trips. This raises the question of whether or not traditional discrete-choice models still provide the best starting point for realistically modeling such a process. Some scholars consider computational process models (CPMs) a promising approach because they allow for heuristic search and suboptimal reasoning processes, which are typical for complex decision making. A model of activity scheduling, SMASH (Simulation Model of Activity Scheduling Heuristics), which incorporates aspects of discrete-choice modeling and CPMs, has been proposed. The model describes the pretrip planning phase, in which individuals decide which activities to perform, at what locations, at what times, in which sequence, and how to travel to the various activity sites. The calibration of this model, using data collected with the interactive computerized procedure MAGIC, has been described in the literature. The results indicated that when scheduling their activities, subjects seem to trade off attributes of activities (time constraints, duration), attributes of the schedule (time spent on activities, overall travel time, realism) and characteristics of the scheduling process (amount of effort already involved in the scheduling process) to obtain feasible schedules. More extensive tests, using simulation experiments, of the model's internal, predictive, and face validity are described. SMASH was used to predict subjects' activity schedules based on their activity agenda and information about their spatio-temporal circumstances. The predicted schedules were then compared with the activity schedules conceived by the subjects themselves under different circumstances, to assess the model's validity. The tests indicated that the model provided satisfactory results with respect to the reproduction of the observed activity schedules. The results of the validity test warrant the use of the model for assessing the effects of various policy measures such as time policies, land use policies, and travel demand management.

This paper presents an intraurban cellular automata model that is an extension to White and Engelen’s pioneering model. The paper’s main contribution is to distinguish between agglomerative effects, determined by the attraction of the neighbourhood, and disagglomerative effects, driven by land prices, or land affordability. In order to do that, social heterogeneity is introduced in the model at the intraurban level. As a result, we can simulate both the evolution of land use and land prices. An application of the model and a sensitivity analysis indicate that neighborhood influence is the main driving force of cities’ spatial configurations. Prices, however, exert an important countereffect. Actually, the higher the influence of land prices, the faster land succession is observed. Finally, an important conclusion of the model is that intraurban models should not fail to differentiate actors by income level. Keywords: cellular automata, intraurban analysis, land prices, income-differentiated urban actors, urban modelling

This paper describes a simulation model of the spatial development of economic activities over time. The key principle addressed is how spatial patterns of economic activity emerge from decisions of individual firms, which are in turn influenced by the existing spatial configuration. A stylized simulation is presented, in which two types of firms grow at different rates, giving rise to split offs and spatial relocations. The influence of the spatial pattern on individual firms' decisions is implemented in various ways, related to well-known effects such as Jacobs and Marshall externalities described in the economic literature and congestion effects. We demonstrate that different assumptions about the spatial scale of these externalities lead to different spatial configurations. Function concentration (Marshall effects) is more likely to lead to the emergence of subcentres with a specific specialisation. However, the spatial scale of the market and agglomeration effects matters. In particular, if Marshall advantages stretch out over a longer distance, more subcentres emerge. Somewhat surprisingly, congestion seems to have a minor impact on the emerging patterns. The simulation outcomes are intuitively plausible, suggesting that micro-simulation is a promising tool for developing forecasting models to support spatial and economic policies. However, they also articulate the need for validation of the behavioural decision rules, in particular by investigating how growth rates and the spatial scale of externalities differs between different industrial sectors.

Developments in transportation and information and communication technologies (ICTs) have facilitated the process labeled activity fragmentation. In this process, the weakened associations between activity, time, and place that ICTs made possible facilitate the disintegration of activities into smaller subtasks, which can then be performed at different times and at different locations. However, until now discussion of the fragmentation of activity hypothesis has been limited to the theoretical domain and largely absent from the empirical domain. In the study reported here we connect both domains by (1) developing a set of measures of activity fragmentation and (2) applying them to study the fragmentation of the activity of paid work using combined activity, travel, and communication diary data collected in the Netherlands in 2007 in order to assess the performance of these indicators. The results show that the indicators differentiate between the multiple facets of activity fragmentation (such as the number, dispersion, and configuration of fragments). The preliminary analyses also suggest that, although the temporal fragmentation of activities appears to be or to have become more common, spatial activity fragmentation is rather limited

Although positive incentives have been successfully applied in various domains to influence behavior, they have received limited attention in transportation. This paper reports on the Dutch 'Spitsmijden' ('Peak Avoidance') project, in which travelers received positive incentives if they avoided travelling in the peak by car. Incentives could be financial (3 to 7 EURO per day) or credits to earn a smartphone at the end of the experiment. Travelers' responses were measured using electronic detection equipment and travel diaries. The results of the study indicate that positive incentives are able to reduce the amount of peak traffic of the participants by about 60%. Travelers mainly responded to the incentives by shifting their car trips to the periods before and after the peak period. Although the experiment was intended to achieve a structural change in travel behavior, we observed that travelers returned to the peak period when the incentives ended. © 2010 J. Ross Publishing, Inc.