01658072

Component

This study analyzed the topic of children’s school travel decisions and parents’ non-motorized travel frequency in order to understand the determinants of these two household-level decisions that affect the overall physical activity levels of household members. Walking and biking to school can help school-age children achieve recommended daily physical activity levels. Similarly, parents who are physically active, whether through non-motorized utilitarian trips or trips for physical and recreational purposes, can improve their own health while influencing the decisions of their children. The 2009 National Household Travel Survey with the add-on sample for Texas was used for the model estimation. A multinomial logit model was estimated for the children’s school mode choice, and a Poisson count regression model was estimated for the parents’ non-motorized travel frequency (weekly). Findings strongly suggested that mothers’ concerns regarding traffic conditions in the neighborhood can discourage children’s active mode use. In contrast, fathers’ work flexibility seemed to facilitate more non-motorized school travel. Similarly, many factors were important in determining non-motorized trip frequency. A flexible work environment, particularly for the mothers, was observed to increase the overall trip frequency of parents. The results from this study corroborate the findings from several earlier studies while also indicating new factors not previously identified. The work done in this study can be extended in several directions. One particularly interesting avenue of future research is to model the two decisions in a joint model to identify the causal direction while accounting for unobserved factors.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD55T Task Force on Arterials and Public Health. Alternate title: An Examination of Children’s School Travel and Parent’s Nonmotorized Travel Decisions: A Focus on Active Travel

18-04757

English

16p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Children; Decision making; Households; Mode choice; Multinomial logits; Nonmotorized transportation; Parents; School trips; Travel surveys

National Household Travel Survey

Physical activity

Texas

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-04757

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 11:10AM