THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CONTACTS AND COMMUNICATION USE ON TRAVEL BEHAVIOR: A SMARTPHONE-BASED STUDY

摘要

In this paper we explore the potential of a smartphone database to investigate influences on travelbehavior. Our aim is to exploit the rich individual-level data available from the smartphone tostudy the influence of communication and social contacts (collected via phone call and sms logs)on spatial movement (collected via GPS). An advantage of smartphone data is the ability tocollect such rich data without user input over a long period of time, and the disadvantages is thedifficulty associated with processing the data. We work with three months of data from 111people collected via a snowball sample. In studying travel behavior, we focus on high levelmeasures of mobility as represented by the size of activity space and travel intensity (ourdependent variables). We use as explanatory variables sociodemographics, spatial relationshipbetween home and work, use of communication (number of phone calls and sms), and the travelbehavior of those in the sample who are connected to the respondent (where connectivity ismeasured by phone and sms contact). We describe how these variables were processed from thesmartphone data and present estimation results from the regression analysis. We find that peopletend to travel in a similar manner as those they are socially connected to (consistent with thesocial network and travel literature) and that communication use is a complement to physicaltravel (consistent with the telecommunication and travel literature). The results, althoughpreliminary, illustrate how smartphone data can be exploited to reveal complex features of travelbehavior, even when they are not collected for travel behavior purpose.