01557056

Component

The expansion of urban spaces and the decline in communication costs and travel costs has meant that people’s core networks no longer need to be tied to their neighborhood. This study uses data from Minneapolis-St. Paul to look at the geographic distribution of contacts. The authors find that people’s social networks are neither very local nor very global with only a minority of contacts living either outside of the country or within 3 blocks of respondents. In addition, the authors investigate whether face-to-face meeting frequency with close contacts is systematically related to the relationship, personal and workplace constraints, network composition, as well as land use and transportation variables. The authors find important factors that explain face-to-face meeting frequency including age and gender, age difference and gender difference with a contact, social network size, and the frequency of technology mediated communication between contacts. Distance between homes within a metropolitan area is found to not be important for meeting frequency but quite important when contacts live 50 miles or greater apart from each other. Built environment and land use factors such as population density and transit accessibility are also investigated. The authors find those living in high-density areas have fewer face-to-face meetings with their closest contacts while transit accessibility has no effect on meeting frequency with close contacts.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values. Alternate title: The Geography of Close Contacts & Face-to-Face Meetings.

01550057

15-5591

English

15p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

References; Tables

Accessibility; Meetings; Public transit; Sociology; Trip length

Social networking

Contacts (People); Face to face communication; Geographic distribution

Minneapolis (Minnesota); Saint Paul (Minnesota)

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-5591

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 1:53PM