Household Activity Rescheduling in Response to Automobile Reduction Scenarios

Forecasting the enduring and wider implications of emerging travel demand management and automobile reduction policies has proved to be a challenging task. Travel behavior researchers point to the need for more in-depth research into the underlying activity-travel scheduling processes as a means to improve the ability to do so. The objective of this research is to explore the household rescheduling and adaptation process to vehicle reduction scenarios. Descriptive results from two, small-sample, in-depth experiments are presented. The first experiment focused on households’ response to a fuel prices increase, whereas the second focused on the response of two-vehicle households to long-term removal of one vehicle from the household. Results indicate that households are aware of a broad range of possible adaptation strategies, including not only mode changes but also a wide variety of changes in activities, planning, and longer-term lifestyle changes. When people were asked to actually implement such stated strategies under realistic conditions, a much more elaborate behavioral response was elicited. This included multiple rescheduling decisions involving several activities and household members over the course of a day or even several days. Thus, even relatively straightforward stated response strategies often lead to interconnected primary and secondary effects on observed activities and travel, realized through a sequence of rescheduling decisions over time and space and across household members. These results suggest that an explicit accounting of rescheduling decision sequences in forecasting models would enhance their behavioral validity and accuracy.