How Far and with Whom Do People Socialize?

Abstract

Hägerstrand's seminal argument that regional science is about people and not just locations is still a compelling and challenging idea when the spatial distribution of activities is studied. In the context of social activity–travel behavior (hosting and visiting), this issue is particularly fundamental as individuals’ main motivation in making social trips is mostly with whom they interact rather than where they go. A useful approach to incorporate the travelers’ social context is to study explicitly the spatial distribution of their social networks, focusing on social locations as emerging from their contacts, rather than analyzing social activity locations in isolation. In this context, this paper studies the spatial distribution of social activities, focusing on the home distances between specific individuals (egos) and the network members (alters) with whom they socialize—serving as a proxy to study social activity–travel location. Using data from a recent study of personal networks and social interaction, and multilevel models that account for the hierarchical structure of these networks, this paper provides empirical evidence on how the characteristics of individuals and their social context relate to the distance separating them. The results strongly suggest that, although the spatial distribution of social interaction has idiosyncratic characteristics, there are several systematic effects associated with the characteristics of egos, alters, and their personal networks that affect the spatial distribution of relationships, and they can contribute to an understanding of where people perform social activities with others.