A Theory of Activity Scheduling Behavior

Abstract

Recognizing that travel is a demand derived from individuals' desires to undertake out-of-home activities, researchers in the area of travel demand have become increasingly interested in analyzing and predicting individuals' decisions about activity participation. This paper formulates a theory of activity scheduling for urban workers. In this theory, each worker chooses whether or not to participate in an out-of-home, nonwork activity in each of five blocks of time defined around their obligatory trip to work. In addition, conditional on the decision to participate in any particular time block, the chosen duration of participation is analyzed. The econometric problems of operationalizing the theory are resolved, and the resulting model is applied to analyze the scheduling behavior of a sample of workers in the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area. This case study suggests some significant directions for further research on activity analysis.