A comparative analysis of discretionary time allocation for social and non-social activities in the U.S. between 2003 and 2013

Moyin Li () and Nebiyou Tilahun
Additional contact information
Moyin Li: Pace, the Suburban Bus Division of the Regional Transport Authority

Transportation, 2020, vol. 47, issue 2, No 17, 893-909

Abstract: Abstract We investigate changes in the allocation of discretionary time to social activities between 2003 and 2013 in the United States using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Within this period, several changes particularly around communication technologies have occurred, including the mass adoption of web and video enabled smart phones. Other advances include social networking platforms, low cost subscription based streaming movies, multi-person online gaming etc., which collectively can alter how people spend their discretionary time and their social activity time use. Summary statistics from the ATUS show a decline in the number of people reporting face-to-face social activities and a growth in the average leisure time spent alone between 2003 and 2013. At the same time, we observe modest declines in average time allotted to social activities and to mandatory activities. We separate time spent on discretionary activities into social activity time use and non-social activity time use and employ five doubly censored Tobit models to investigate time allocation for social and non-social activities between these two time points. These models show that the relative proportion of discretionary time allotted to face-to-face social activities has declined between 2003 and 2013. The apportionment of social to non-social time is also influenced by other sociodemographic variables such as gender, age, household structure, education and work hours. We summarize the implications of these findings to transportation and beyond.

Keywords: Social activity participation; Face-to-face meetings; Time allocation; Technology and time use; American Time Use Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11116-018-9924-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:transp:v:47:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11116-018-9924-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11116/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11116-018-9924-1

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation is currently edited by Kay W. Axhausen

More articles in Transportation from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().