Didn’t travel or just being lazy? An empirical study of soft-refusal in mobility diaries

Mathijs Haas (), Maarten Kroesen, Caspar Chorus, Sascha Hoogendoorn-Lanser and Serge Hoogendoorn
Additional contact information
Mathijs Haas: KiM Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis
Maarten Kroesen: Delft University of Technology
Caspar Chorus: Delft University of Technology
Sascha Hoogendoorn-Lanser: Delft University of Technology
Serge Hoogendoorn: Delft University of Technology

Transportation, 2025, vol. 52, issue 3, No 9, 955-981

Abstract: Abstract In mobility panels, respondents may use a strategy of soft-refusal to lower their response burden, e.g. by claiming they did not leave their house even though they actually did. Soft-refusal leads to poor data quality and may complicate research, e.g. focused on people with actual low mobility. In this study we develop three methods to detect the presence of soft-refusal in mobility panels, based on respectively (observed and predicted) out-of-home activity, straightlining and speeding. For each indicator, we explore the relation with reported immobility and panel attrition. The results show that speeding and straightlining in a questionnaire is strongly related to reported immobility in a (self-reported) travel diary. Using a binary logit model, respondents who are predicted to leave their home but report no trips are identified as possible soft refusers. To reveal different patterns of soft-refusal and assess how these patterns influence the probability to drop out of the panel, a latent transition model is estimated. The results show four behavioral patterns with respect to soft-refusal ranging from a large class of reliable respondents who score positive on all three soft-refusal indicators, to a small ‘high-risk’ class of respondents who score poorly on all indicators. This ‘high-risk’ group also reports the highest immobility and has the highest attrition rate. The model also shows that respondents who do not drop out of the panel, tend to stay in the same behavioral pattern over time. The amount of soft-refusal expressed by a respondent therefore seems to be a stable behavioral trait.

Keywords: Travel behavior; Soft-refusal; Response behavior; Mobility panels; Speeding; Straightlining; Attrition; Latent transition analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11116-023-10445-6 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:52:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s11116-023-10445-6

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11116-023-10445-6

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 ().