Weekend activity and travel Behavior in a developing country - Empirical study using multilevel structural equation models

According to the government of the Republic of Korea, by 2010 workers throughout the country will have a 5-day workweek instead of the current 6-day one. The change will have a great impact on the lifestyles of the employed and their families and also on the transportation system, since travel patterns, traffic demand, and the patterns of congestion will change during the weekends. Before the policy becomes effective, negative impacts on the transportation system should be examined to conceive measures that will maintain a dependable level of service during the weekends. So far, however, little attention has been directed to the understanding of how policies affect travel behavior in Korea. In this study, activity participation and travel behavior are compared between two population groups, those currently working 5 days a week and those working 6 days a week. Understanding the difference is an essential component of the development of this policy in Korea, especially since the 5-day workweek will be instituted in the near future. The data set used in this study is the Seoul Metropolitan Area Transportation Survey, which was conducted in June 2002. Multilevel structural equation models (SEMs) are developed, which combine features of SEMs and multilevel analysis. The SEM makes possible the estimation of complex relationships among exogenous and endogenous variables, and multilevel analysis can interpret interdependency among hierarchical structural levels such as those within and between household levels simultaneously. With this approach, significant relationships were found among sociodemographics, activity participation, and travel behavior within households as well as between household models, captured simultaneously by the multilevel SEMs employed in this research.