01371029

Component

Social-leisure activities account for an important and increasing segment of travel in modern societies. Yet, these activities are least understood in current activity-based models of travel demand. In this paper the authors propose a model to generate population-wide social networks that in the context of large-scale micro-simulation of travel demand provide a basis for modeling social interactions. The proposed model consists of a friendship formation model formulated in the random utility maximization (RUM) framework, and a component to simulate the network in a population. The authors show how the friendship model can be estimated by loglikelihood methods on observations of personal networks. In an application to the Swiss context, the authors demonstrate the estimation and ability of the model to reproduce relevant characteristics of networks, including for the first time simultaneously geographic distance, attribute similarity (homophily), size of personal networks (degree distribution) and clustering (transitivity). The authors conclude that the model, in combination with current methods to generate synthetic populations, offers a basis to model social-leisure activities and associated travel in more rigorous behavioral ways than previously possible.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values

01362476

12-1619

English

18p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Activity choices; Leisure time; Microsimulation; Social factors; Travel demand

Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-1619

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 5:03PM