Activity Rescheduling Strategies and Decision Processes in Day-to-Day Life

Abstract

Results are presented from an in-depth survey of the rescheduling decision process as it occurs in day-to-day life. The multistage survey involved a preplanning interview, followed by a prompted-recall diary supported by the Global Positioning System. Subsequent comparison of preplans with executed schedules was done to identify schedule modifications, deletions, and more-impulsive additions automatically. An open-ended interview was then used to elicit the planning time horizon of rescheduling decisions, the impetus of a decision, the impact of a single decision on the rest of the schedule, and the process that subjects go through to make a decision. Responses were then compared with different sociodemographic and activity variables by using a cross-tabulation and chi-squared analysis to determine if any associations exist. Highlights of these results include the findings that adding and deleting activities requires more talking in person, that personal need is a common cause for adding shopping activities, and that the more people involved in a decision, the longer the duration of the added activity. Three conclusions can be made from these findings. First, far more rescheduling decisions and scheduling conflicts were identified compared with previous studies. Second, there were many more varied causes of rescheduling decisions beyond those typically captured in existing rescheduling conflict models. Finally, sociodemographics had little effect on aspects of rescheduling decisions compared with activity variables. Discussion of how such results relate to past conceptual frameworks is included.

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