Walkability as a Summary Measure in a Spatially Autoregressive Mode Choice Model: An Instrumental Variable Approach

Frank Goetzke and Patrick M. Andrade

A chapter in Progress in Spatial Analysis, 2010, pp 217-229 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In recent years it has become more common to include social interactions or neighborhood effects (also called social network effects) in transportation modeling. These models are typically in the tradition of Brock and Durlauf (2001, 2002) who were among the first to propose a discrete choice model that includes social interactions and neighborhood effects. However, their approach is inherently non-spatial, while the topology of social interactions and neighborhood effects can be best captured spatially (Leenders 2002; Páez et al. 2008a). Therefore, some of the latest articles in transportation modeling have moved towards explicitly incorporating the spatially autoregressive structure of social network effects into their models (e.g. Dugundi and Walker 2005; Páez and Scott 2007; Goetzke 2008). This new direction in transportation research is not all that surprising, given the success of spatial econometrics as an emerging modeling method across social science disciplines. The econometric strategy to implement an independent variable representing social interactions and neighborhood effects, as proposed by Brock and Durlauf (2001, 2002), is to use the group mean of the observed dependent choice variable, as defined by social interactions and neighborhood effects. This approach can be spatially extended if the group mean is based on spatial relations, as in traffic analysis zones (Dugundi and Walker 2005), a spatial weight matrix (Goetzke 2008), or a matrix based on personal relations (Páez and Scott 2007). Therefore, choices could be modeled as a function of the typical choice determinants in travel behavior analysis (e.g. personal, household, trip and mode characteristics), or as choices of either a non-spatial group or spatial neighbors. Empirical work dealing with mode choice decisions by Dugundi and Walker (2005), and Goetzke (2008) give evidence that the mode choice decisions of spatial neighbors are indeed associated with the mode choice decision of the individual.

Keywords: Mode Choice; Neighborhood Effect; Discrete Choice Model; Transportation Modeling; Contextual Interaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:adspcp:978-3-642-03326-1_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783642033261

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-03326-1_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Spatial Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().