DataMobile: Smartphone Travel Survey Experiment

Abstract

An experiment that used an application of a pragmatic smartphone travel survey developed to minimize respondent burden while collecting primarily passive data between destinations is described; invited participants came from known population, Concordia University. Respondent burden was reduced by optimizing battery usage, requiring little from respondents apart from downloading and installing an app, completing a short survey, and allowing the app to run in their smartphones’ background. The experiment showed that a surprisingly large number of people (892) contacted by e-mail were willing to participate in the study, with a resultant surprisingly large amount of data as well (4,154 respondent days). Moreover, the overall age distribution of the sample was found to be closer to the true population than a traditional origin–destination (O-D) survey capturing the same population. Differences in travel behavior results from the O-D survey appear plausible given what is known about both smartphone and traditional surveys. That respondents were not asked to validate their data reduced respondent burden, but some validated data are necessary to derive meaningful information from collected data. The collection of some less accurate data when GPS is not available is an important avenue to reduce the identification of missing trips. The authors view this experiment as a data point, among others, in attempts to understand the trade-offs involved in the development of smartphone applications. The authors hope it will contribute to the use of such applications on a larger scale in data collection initiatives.