Modeling Workers’ Daily Nonwork Activity Participation and Duration

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical model used to determine jointly a worker's decision to participate in a nonhome and nonwork activity and the decision on how long to participate. With the household interview survey data from the New York City area, the workers’ participation and duration decisions were estimated for each of five periods in a worker's day: before morning commute, morning commute, midday, evening commute, and after evening commute. To account for the censored nature of the duration data (i.e., a large number of observations clustered at zero), Heckman's sample selection model was used together with the full information maximum likelihood estimation method. To enhance the behavioral basis for the models, extensive statistical tests were given to the model specifications and the assumptions underlying the model structure. The empirical results provide useful insights into the effects of socio-demographics, land use–transportation measures, and activity duration characteristics on workers’ daily scheduling of nonwork activities and travel in a highly urbanized environment. This study also provides exploratory methodologic evidence that could lead to an approach for predicting the change in a worker's nonwork activity patterns (participation and duration) as a result of changes in future demographic conditions and land use–transportation scenarios.