It’s not all fun and games: An investigation of the reported benefits and disadvantages of conducting activities while commuting

Travel-based multitasking, or the performance of activities while traveling, is more feasible than ever before, as the expanding availability of shared ride services and increasing vehicle automation coincide with the ubiquity of portable information and communication technology devices. However, the question of whether, and if so, how these increasingly blurred boundaries between activities are truly helping rather than hurting us is not presently well-understood. Using an attitudinally-rich travel survey of Northern California commuters (N ≈ 2500), the authors develop a conceptual and empirically-based framework for studying benefits and disadvantages of travel-based multitasking. Through latent variable models of reported benefits and disadvantages of activities conducted on a recent commute, the authors identify constructs associated with hedonic and productive benefits, and with affective and cognitive disadvantages. This empirically-developed framework informs the definition of binary variables indicating the presence/absence of each construct for a given traveler on the commute in question. The authors then present two bivariate binary probit models that examine the effects of person and trip attributes such as personality traits, chosen mode, commute preferences, and activities conducted while traveling on the presence of those benefits and disadvantages, respectively. Notably, the authors find evidence that conditions/activities that may facilitate multitasking benefits can also simultaneously yield disadvantages; for example, several activities – conspicuously including talking on or otherwise using a phone – increase the probability of receiving benefits while also increasing the probability of experiencing cognitive disadvantages. This finding resonates with the general multitasking literature, and empirically corroborates the suggestion that travel-based multitasking may not uniformly increase trip utility.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2019.05.008
• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214367X18302138
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/2214367X
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2019 Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Shaw, F Atiyya
  • Malokin, Aliaksandr
  • Mokhtarian, Patricia L
  • Circella, Giovanni
• Publication Date: 2019-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 8-25
• Serial:
  • Travel Behaviour and Society
  • Volume: 17
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 2214-367X
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/2214367X

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Activity choices; Commuting; Multitasking; Travel behavior
• Geographic Terms: Northern California
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01721432
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Nov 1 2019 9:42AM