A Mixed Joint Discrete-Continuous Model of Non-Mandatory Out-of-Home Activity Type and Activity Duration

Discrete-continuous joint modeling techniques have been widely used in travel behavior analysis to investigate casual relationship between a discrete choice and its continuous outcome. Recently, copula-based discrete-continuous joint models have well established their application in travel demand modeling, thanks to their flexible and non-restrictive dependency structure. The copula parameter underlines the existence of a significant unobserved component that affects both the discrete decision and the continuous outcome. This study extends previous efforts on copula-based joint modeling by incorporating unobserved heterogeneity into a copula-based discrete-continuous joint modeling framework. It examines two scenarios: 1) incorporating unobserved heterogeneity into marginal distributions; and 2) incorporating unobserved heterogeneity into copula parameter. Mixed and non-mixed copula models are developed and examined for weekday non-mandatory out-of-home activity type choice as the discrete decision and episode duration as the continuous variable. The focus of the study is on weekday non-mandatory out-of-home activities. The data used for the purpose of this study comprise 5,000 randomly selected trip-activity observations from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) Travel Tracker Survey collected in the Greater Chicago Area in 2007-2008. The results indicate that the mixed Frank model with incorporated unobserved heterogeneity outperforms other non-mixed and mixed copula models. Also, estimated copula parameter indicates a strong negative relationship between error terms of discrete choice and its continuous outcome.

• 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:
  • Karimi, Behzad
  • Pourabdollahi, Zahra
  • Anbarani, Ramin Shabanpour
  • Mohammadian, Abolfazl (Kouros)
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Activity choices; Travel behavior; Travel demand; Travel surveys
• Candidate Terms: Copula-based models
• Identifier Terms: Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning
• Uncontrolled Terms: Discrete-continuous models; Heterogeneity (Models)
• Geographic Terms: Chicago Metropolitan Area
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01556578
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-2261
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 9 2015 4:56PM