Modeling Objective Mobility: The Impact of Travel-Related Attitudes, Personality and Lifestyle on Distance Traveled

This report is one of a series of research documents produced by an ongoing study of individuals' attitudes toward travel. The data are obtained from 1,357 residents of three San Francisco Bay area neighborhoods, who work either part- or full time and commute. The key premise of this research is as follows: although the demand for travel is, for the most part, derived from the demand to engage in spatially-separated activities (as conventional wisdom holds), travel itself has an intrinsically positive utility that contributes to the demand for it. That affinity for travel itself (partially operationalized in this study through the Travel Liking variables) varies by person, mode, and purpose of travel. The goals of this research are to better understand the factors explaining the observed variations in Travel Liking, and to understand the impact of Travel Liking on other travel-related characteristics. The key variables used in the study can be grouped into 11 categories: Objective Mobility, Perceived Mobility, Relative Desired Mobility, Travel Liking, Attitudes, Personality, Lifestyle, Excess Travel, Mobility Constraints, Travel Modifiers and Demographics.