Analysis of Lifestyle Choices: Neighborhood Type, Travel Patterns, and Activity Participation

Abstract

Activity-based travel modeling has begun to make significant progress toward a more behavioral framework for simulating household travel behavior. A significant challenge remains in the need to address the interaction of daily activity and travel patterns with longer-term household choices of vehicle ownership, residential location, and employment location. The choices often depend on one another and jointly define the lifestyle of the household. These choices are likely to evolve over the course of the life cycle as households are formed; as children are born, raised, and ultimately depart to form their own households; and as retirement and old age change patterns of residence, work, and travel. A framework is developed for analyzing household choices relating to three dimensions of lifestyle: travel patterns (including vehicle ownership), activity participation, and residential location (neighborhood type). With cluster analysis on data from the Puget Sound Transportation Panel, nine classifications of lifestyle are uncovered. These clusters demonstrate empirically how decisions of residential location reinforce and affect daily decisions related to travel patterns and activity participation. The applicability of these lifestyle clusters for land use transportation planning is discussed.