Specification and Estimation of Nested Logit Model of Home, Workplaces, and Commuter Mode Choices by Multiple-Worker Households

Abstract

Household behavior in the selection of home location and the selection of workplace locations and commuting modes for employed members involves trade-offs among the attributes of the available alternatives for the different household members. A modified form of nested logit model representing this behavior has been developed and estimated using disaggregate revealed preference observations collected in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Three categories of choice—choice of home location for the household, choice of workplace location for each worker in the household, and choice of mode for the trip to work for each worker in the household—are treated as a joint choice made by the household, allowing for differing numbers of workers in different households. A nesting structure that takes into account the greater similarity among mode alternatives is combined with a system for weighting, by age and gender, the contributions of different individual workers’ utilities to the total household utility. This leads to a nested logit model in which each household has its own nesting structure that is based on the age and gender of the household members. The utility function coefficients and weighting function parameters were estimated with full-information maximum likelihood by using purpose-built software. The resulting model extends consideration of household spatial behavior at the disaggregate level beyond the one-worker and sequential-conditional choice paradigms and provides various insights into the nature of this behavior.