Travel Behavior Implications of Information and Communications Technology in Puget Sound Region

The explosive growth of information and communications technology (ICT) has given rise to new paradigms in the manner in which business is conducted and in which people conduct their everyday affairs. This new dimension has the potential to affect travel behavior in direct and indirect ways and has possible policy implications for transportation planning. A multivariate multilevel analysis is presented using data from the Puget Sound region. ICT use effects on travel behavior are examined in terms of activity and travel time expenditures in a day. Model formulation in the study accounts for day-to-day variation, controls the close relationship between activity participation and travel, and incorporates the contextual influence of households on individual behavior by using observed and unobserved heterogeneity regression model components. The findings in this study indicate that Internet use at home and in the workplace is associated with a reduction in travel times. In contrast, mobile technology use is associated with significantly longer travel times. However, the high level of person-to-person variance of this effect shows that there may be groups of people using technology in radically different and most likely conflicting ways (e.g., one group uses mobile technology to consolidate trips and the other to reach activity opportunities that require longer travel times). In terms of activity participation, none of the technologies appears to be a significant contributor to the difference in behavior among technology users and nonusers.