Capturing Latent Household Preferences in Daily Activity Pattern Choices: Application to the Houston-Galveston Region Activity-Based Model

摘要

One fundamental feature of most operational activity-based models (ABMs) developed in theU.S. is the concept of a day activity pattern, which in its broadest sense, is a way ofcharacterizing all of the activities undertaken in a day at the individual level. This often includesa sequence of models that generate activities of different types for each individual. In manycases, these models treat all individuals in a household independently, while in other cases,specialized techniques are used to capture intra-household relationships. This paper presents anew technique to capture some of these intra-household relationships in a daily activity pattern(DAP) model via latent household preference terms, while also allowing for other specificrelationships to emerge in more standard ways. The model is estimated on data from theHouston-Galveston region and serves as an extension to the DAP model framework being usedin the ABM system under development for that region. The results suggest that strong householdlevel preferences exist. For many activity pattern types, these household preferences are moreimportant than preferences of the individual. In addition, the modeling framework is concise,can easily accommodate households of any size, and can predict the exact number and type ofmandatory tours (i.e., work, school, and university activities) for individuals in a single model.