Model for Children's School Travel Mode Choice: Accounting for Effects of Spatial and Social Interaction
Abstract
Numerous programs aimed at enhancing the choice of bicycling and walking as modes of choice for children's trips to and from school are being implemented by public agencies around the world. Disaggregate models that can account for the myriad of factors that influence the school mode choice of children are needed to forecast the potential impacts of such programs and policies. This paper presents a model for school mode choice that can capture the unobserved spatial interaction effects that may influence household decision making in choosing a mode of transportation for children's trips to and from school. For example, households that are geographically close together in a neighborhood may interact or observe one another and be influenced by each other's actions. To overcome the computational intractability associated with estimating a discrete choice model with spatial interaction effects, the paper proposes a maximum approximated composite marginal likelihood approach for estimating model parameters. The model is applied to a sample of children in Southern California whose households responded to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey in the United States. Spatial correlation effects are statistically significant, and they arise from interactions among households that are geographically close to one another. The findings suggest that public policy programs aimed at enhancing the use of bicycle and walk modes may have a greater impact if directed toward the local neighborhood level as opposed to a more diffuse regional level.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
1. Beck L. F., and Greenspan A. I. Why Don't More Children Walk to School? Journal of Safety Research, Vol. 39, No. 5, 2008, pp. 449–452.
2. McDonald N. C. Active Transportation to School: Trends Among U.S. Schoolchildren, 1969–2001. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 32, No. 6, 2007, pp. 509–516.
3. McMillan T. E. The Relative Influence of Urban Form on a Child's Travel Mode to School. Transportation Research, Part A, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2007, pp. 69–79.
4. Black C., Collins A., and Snell M. Encouraging Walking: The Case of Journey-to-School Trips in Compact Urban Areas. Urban Studies, Vol. 38, No. 7, 2001, pp. 1121–1141.
5. Koplan J. P., Liverman C. T., and Kraak V. I., eds. Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2005.
6. Cooper A. R., Page A. S., Foster L. J., and Qahwaji D. Commuting to School: Are Children Who Walk More Physically Active? American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2003, pp. 273–276.
7. Loucaides C., and Jago R. Differences in Physical Activity by Gender, Weight Status, and Travel Mode to School in Cypriot Children. Preventive Medicine, Vol. 47, No. 1, 2008, pp. 107–111.
8. Pont K., Ziviani J., Wadley D., Bennett S., and Abbott R. Environmental Correlates of Children's Active Transportation: A Systematic Literature Review. Health and Place, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2009, pp. 849–862.
9. Mitra R., Buliung R. N., and Faulkner G. E. J. Spatial Clustering and the Temporal Mobility of Walking School Trips in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada. Health and Place, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2010, pp. 646–655.
10. Chen Y., Ravulaparthy S., Deutsch K., Dalal P., Yoon S. Y., Lei T., Goulias K. G., Pendyala R. M., and Bhat C. R. Development of Opportunity-Based Accessibility Indicators. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., forthcoming.
11. Lawrence Frank and Company, Inc. Youth Travel to School: Community Design Relationships with Mode Choice, Vehicle Emissions, and Healthy Body Weight. Final Report. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., 2008.
12. Ewing R., Schroeer W., and Greene W. School Location and Student Travel: Analysis of Factors Affecting Mode Choice. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1895, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2004, pp. 55–63.
13. Yeung J., Wearing S., and Hills A. P. Child Transport Practices and Perceived Barriers in Active Commuting to School. Transportation Research, Part A, Vol. 42, No. 6, 2008, pp. 895–900.
14. Yarlagadda A. K., and Srinivasan S. Modeling Children's School Travel Mode and Parental Escort Decisions. Transportation, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2008, pp. 201–218.
15. Boarnet M. G., Anderson C. L., Day C., McMillan T. E., and Alfonzo M. Evaluation of the California Safe Routes to School Legislation: Urban Form Changes and Children's Active Transport to School. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 28, Suppl. 2, 2005, pp. S134–S140.
16. Timperio A., Ball K., Salmon J., Robers R., Giles-Corti B., Simmons D., Baur L. A., and Crawford D. Personal, Family, Social, and Environmental Correlates of Active Commuting to School. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2006, pp. 45–51.
17. DiGuiseppi C., Roberts I., and Li L. Determinants of Car Travel on Daily Journeys to School: Cross Sectional Survey of Primary School Children. British Medical Journal, Vol. 316, No. 7142, 1998, pp. 1426–1428.
18. Müller S., Tscharaktschiew S., and Haase K. Travel-to-School Mode Choice Modelling and Patterns of School Choice in Urban Areas. Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 16, No. 5, 2008, pp. 342–357.
19. Zwerts E., Allaert G., Janssens D., Wets G., and Witlox F. How Children View Their Travel Behaviour: A Case Study from Flanders (Belgium). Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 18, No. 6, 2010, pp. 702–710.
20. Dellinger A. M., and Staunton C. E. Barriers to Children Walking and Biking to School: United States, 1999. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 288, No. 11, 2002, pp. 1343–1344.
21. McDonald N. C. Children's Mode Choice for School Trip: The Role of Distance and School Location in Walking to School. Transportation, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2008, pp. 23–35.
22. McMillan T. E., Day K., Boarnet M., Alfonzo M., and Anderson C. Johnny Walks to School—Does Jane? Sex Differences in Children's Active Travel to School. Children, Youth, and Environments, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2006, pp. 75–90.
23. Pooley C., Whyatt D., Walker M., Davies G., Coulton P., and Bamford W. Understanding the School Journey: Integrating Data on Travel and Environment. Environment and Planning A, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2010, pp. 948–965.
24. Ulfarsson G., and Shankar V. N. Children's Travel to School: Discrete Choice Modeling of Correlated Motorized and Nonmotorized Transportation Modes Using Covariance Heterogeneity. Environment and Planning B, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2008, pp. 195–206.
25. Bolduc D., Fortin B., and Fournier M. The Effect of Incentive Policies on the Practice Location of Doctors: A Multinomial Probit Analysis. Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1996, pp. 703–732.
26. Bhat C. R., and Guo J. Y. A Mixed Spatially Correlated Logit Model: Formulation and Application to Residential Choice Modeling. Transportation Research, Part B, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2004, pp. 147–168.
27. Anselin L. Spatial Externalities, Spatial Multipliers, and Spatial Econometrics. International Regional Science Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2003, pp. 153–166.
28. Bhat C. R., and Sener I. N. A Copula-Based Closed-Form Binary Logit Choice Model for Accommodating Spatial Correlation Across Observational Units. Journal of Geographical Systems, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2009, pp. 243–272.
29. LeSage J. P. Bayesian Estimation of Limited Dependent Variable Spatial Autoregressive Models. Geographical Analysis, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2000, pp. 19–35.
30. Fleming M. M. Techniques for Estimating Spatially Dependent Discrete Choice Models. In Advances in Spatial Econometrics: Methodology, Tools and Applications (Anselin L., Florax R. J. G. M., and Rey S. J., eds.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004, pp. 145–168.
31. Bhat C. R. The Maximum Approximated Composite Marginal Likelihood (MACML) Estimation of Multinomial Probit-Based Unordered Response Choice Models. Technical Paper. Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas, Austin, 2010.
32. Godambe V. P. An Optimum Property of Regular Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1960, pp. 1208–1211.
33. Yang S., and Allenby G. M. Modeling Interdependent Consumer Preferences. Journal of Market Research, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2003, pp. 282–294.
34. Pace L., Salvan A., and Sartori N. Adjusting Composite Likelihood Ratio Statistics. Statistica Sinica, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2011, pp. 129–148.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published online: January 1, 2011
Issue published: January 2011
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Journals metrics
This article was published in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board.
VIEW ALL JOURNAL METRICSArticle usage*
Total views and downloads: 224
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Altmetric
See the impact this article is making through the number of times it’s been read, and the Altmetric Score.
Learn more about the Altmetric Scores
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 0
Crossref: 49
- Accessibility as the determinant of attending educational opportunitie...
- Exploring the frequency of public transport use among adolescents: a s...
- Walking School Bus Program Feasibility in a Suburban Setting
- Travel attitudes, the built environment and travel behavior relationsh...
- International Research Progress in School Travel and Behavior: A Liter...
- Spatiotemporal analysis of activity-travel fragmentation based on spat...
- Behavior of parents and children in the way they use public transport....
- Is the car losing its shine? An analysis of European adolescents’ imag...
- A spatial rank-ordered probit model with an application to travel mode...
- A unified framework for vehicle rerouting and travel behavior models
- Impact of COVID-19 on educational trips – an Indian case study
- The social dimensions of children's travel
- Analyzing the impact of neighborhood safety on active school travels
- The Interaction Effects in the Relationship Between Urban Form and Sus...
- Data mining techniques to analyze the factors influencing active commu...
- Individual and household influences
- Children’s school travel and wellbeing in the Netherlands
- Population Distributions of Age Groups and Their Influencing Factors B...
- Optimizing Safe Routes to School
- An examination of children’s school travel: A focus on active travel a...
- Impact of weather conditions on middle school students’ commute mode c...
- G-SIVAR: A GLOBAL SPATIAL INDICATOR BASED ON VARIOGRAM
- The Burden of Choice? Assessing the Impact of School Choice on Student...
- The Influence of the Built Environment on School Children’s Metro Ride...
- Mode choice and travel distance joint models in school trips
- Associations of children's active school travel with perceptions of th...
- Effect of distance from home to school and spatial dependence between ...
- A decade of dynamics of residential location, car ownership, activity,...
- Promoting active student travel: A longitudinal study
- Understanding school trip mode choice – The case of Kanpur (India)
- Children’s active trips to school: a review and analysis
- A Decade of Dynamics of Residential Location, Car Ownership, Activity,...
- On accommodating spatial interactions in a Generalized Heterogeneous D...
- A Multivariate Spatial Analysis for Anticipating New Firm Counts
- E-cigarette use among students and e-cigarette specialty retailer pres...
- Walking, cycling and the urban form: A Heckman selection model of acti...
- Examining the influence of stop level infrastructure and built environ...
- Social interactions in transportation: analyzing groups and spatial ne...
- Generalized behavioral framework for choice models of social influence...
- Walking Behavior: The Role of Childhood Travel Experience
- The influence of neighborhood environment and household travel interac...
- A GIS approach to modelling CO 2 emissions...
- Modeling Trip Attributes and Feasibility Study of co-ordinated Bus for...
- Examining the Influence of Urban form and Land Use on Bus Ridership in...
- Development of an indicator to assess the spatial fit of discrete choi...
- On accommodating spatial dependence in bicycle and pedestrian injury c...
- An explanation of the relationship between adults’ work trip mode and ...
- Independent Mobility and Mode Choice for School Transportation: A Revi...
- Spatial Analysis of Propensity to Escort Children to School in Souther...
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Get access
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
loading institutional access options
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
