Investigating the Impacts of Weather Variability on Individual's Daily Activity-Travel Patterns: A Comparison Between Commuters and Noncommuters in Sweden

Using thirteen years span datasets from the Swedish National Travel Survey and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, this study aims to analyse the impacts of the weather characteristics’ variability on individual activity-travel parameters. In doing so, this study uses alternative representation of weather instead of absolute perspective and employs a holistic model structure which takes into account the interrelation, direct and indirect interactions, among various travel behaviour parameters, given the variability of weather conditions. Structural equation models (SEM) are applied for this purpose. The models for commuters and non-commuters are constructed separately. Further, the results from SEM are then compared with the separated regressions for each endogenous variable using Tobit and negative binomial models. The analysis results show that the effects of weather can be even more extreme when considering indirect effects from other travel behaviour indicators that the authors are interested in. The commuters are much less sensitive to weather change than the non-commuters. The monthly variation of temperature plays a more important role in changing individual travel behaviour, whilst in the short term people are more sensitive to the daily variation of relative humidity and wind speed. Poor visibility and heavy rain strongly discourage the intention of travel, leading to the reduction of the non-work activity duration, the travel time and the number of trips on the given day.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Liu, Chengxi
  • Susilo, Yusak O
  • Karlström, Anders
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 25p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Activity choices; Commuters; Environmental impacts; Structural equation modeling; Travel patterns; Weather conditions
• Geographic Terms: Sweden
• Subject Areas: Environment; Planning and Forecasting; I15: Environment; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01515846
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-0641
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 25 2014 9:15AM