Modeling the Structural Relationships of Activity-Travel Participation of Working Women

Abstract

The structural relationships between work and non-work activity participation and associated travel engagements are developed for single working mothers and married working mothers. Multiple-group structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the relationships between work and non-work time usage of the two groups for both in-home and out-of-home contexts. Non-work activities are childcare, maintenance, and discretionary activities. In addition to revealing interrelationships between work and non-work activity participation for each group, this multiple-group SEM model allows for the comparison of how these relationships differ across the two study groups. Data were obtained from the American Time Use Survey for 2012. The resulting model shows that these two groups demonstrate statistically significant differences in their activity interactions in terms of how participation in an activity affects the duration of other activities and travel. The model also captures the different degree of impacts of household and person-level socio-demographic characteristics (exogenous effects) of these two groups on activity participation (activity duration) and travel engagement (travel time). The findings of this research advance the understanding of the activity participation and time-allocation decisions made by working mothers, which can lead toward policy formulation for them in terms of social, land-use planning, and activity-based approach perspectives.

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