Destination choice in daily activity travel: the mental map’s repertoire

Abstract

In order to improve the behavioral realism of activity-based travel demand models, a deeper understanding of individual’s travel decision process is needed. Therefore, this research project aims at revealing the variety of critical spatial factors in an individual’s mental map which influence daily activity travel (AT) behavior. A qualitative travel survey and in-depth interviews are used to identify spatial factors that appear in respondents’ destination choice decisions when discussing their daily activity space. Recorded interviews are processed with specialized software for qualitative data analysis (ATLAS.ti). First, representative IF-THEN(-ELSE)-heuristics used by respondents are identified and framed within the daily AT decision process and classified in a script network view. In addition, occurring spatial elements are indicated. To conclude, this article suggests a new “script” approach to grasp the behavioral mechanisms present in daily AT decisions and argues that further research along this line would contribute to the understanding of the impact of travel demand measures (TDM) and its assessment in activitybased travel demand models by means of an agent-based computational process model.