Understanding activity engagement and time use patterns in a developing country context

Abstract

Flourishing economy, rapid industrialization and increasing trend of motorization have been shaping societies in the developing countries like India in an unprecedented manner.Infrastructure backlog amid such rapid growth in all imaginable directions has heavily exacerbated the urban transport crisis in these countries by alarming increase in vehicular travel demand, road fatalities, and environmental pollution. To address urban transport challenges, the necessary development and implementation of effective transport planning and policies have generally lagged in the developing countries compared to that seen in the developed countries due to several constraints including resource constraints, knowledge constraints, institutional constraints and so on. However, in the recent past, with the rapid development seen by several emerging economies and the explosive growth in transportation infrastructure investment, there is a growing interest in the development and implementati\non of advanced travel demand modeling systems in developing countries. But lack of necessary research and exploration of travel behavior in a developing country context has left very limited knowledge for us to understand the extent of applicability of these advanced theories and methodologies in a different socio-cultural perspective. Assessing the practical relevance of the subject, this research adopts a comprehensive approach to explore the activity engagement pattern and time use behavior from a developing country standpoint. To accomplish this goal, a series of empirical and analytical studies are performed on a household travel survey data set available from Thane Metropolitan Area in India. The study also introduces new concepts and facilitates enhancements of existing modeling methodologies in the field of travel behavior and time use research. The study results provide very insightful findings and plausible interpretations consistent with a developing country perspective reco\ngnizing a wide spectrum of differences and similarities in activity patterns and time use behavior between a developed and a developing country. Specified model structures are meaningfully able to incorporate various socio-cultural and institutional constraints and reflected sensitivity to the behavioral variability between the contexts suggesting that advanced analytical techniques may be satisfactorily applied on the data set from developing countries which may contribute important ingredients in the development of advanced activity-based model system in the countries like India.

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