Measuring and Explaining the Increase of Travel Distance: A Multilevel Analysis Using Repeated Cross Sectional Travel Surveys

Oliver Lipps and Uwe Kunert

No 492, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Structural and behavioural factors drive the growth and change of spatial mobility in the industrialised countries: on the macro level we have observed tremendous increases in travel demand as measured by person miles travelled. This paper studies this development of mobility of tripmaking adult persons on working days by analysing micro data as it is provided by the four National Travel Surveys (NTS) that were conducted in Germany since the mid seventies. In order to fully capture the context which determines individual behaviour, we account for the nested hierarchy of persons within households within spatial settings by using a multilevel modelling approach. In addition we investigate the prediction power of a few classic socio-demographic variables for the daily travel distance of individuals in the four data sets. We find that after controlling for the covariates considered, the total variance of daily travel distance decreases over time, this decrease stemming both from the INDIVIDUAL and the HOUSEHOLD level. We further find that traditional socio-demographic household and person characteristics diminish in importance to explain person mileage. Significance and amount of the variance components taken together indicate some AREA level effect and strong HOUSEHOLD level context effects on individual daily distance. Thus it is important to consider all conceptual levels which generate significant variation in the mobility indicator under study.

Pages: 24 p.
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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