Previous research has shown that personal, neighborhood, and mobility characteristics could influence life satisfaction and loneliness of people and that exposure to public spaces, such as green spaces, may also affect the extent to which people feel lonely or satisfied with life. However, previous studies mainly focused on one of these effects, resulting in a lack of knowledge about the simultaneous effects of these characteristics on loneliness and life satisfaction. This study therefore aims to gain insights into how public-space use mediates the relations between personal, neighborhood, and mobility characteristics on the one hand and loneliness and life satisfaction on the other hand. Relationships were analyzed using a path analysis approach, based on a sample of 200 residents of three neighborhoods of the Dutch city ‘s-Hertogenbosch. The results showed that the influence of frequency of public-space use on life satisfaction and loneliness is limited. The effects of personal, neighborhood, and mobility characteristics on frequency of use of public space and on loneliness and life satisfaction were found to be significant. Age and activities of daily living (ADL) are significantly related to each other, and ADL was found to influence recreational and passive space use and loneliness and life satisfaction. Policymakers should, therefore, mainly focus on creating neighborhoods that are highly walkable and accessible, where green spaces and public-transport facilities are present, to promote physical activity among all residents.
This paper reports some main findings of a study that was conducted to understand individuals’ use of time better for travel, in particular on public transport. Based on methodological considerations, field observations were used to collect the relevant information. Results of various multivariate analyses indicate that time allocation to various activities, including sleeping, while traveling on public transport (specifically, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transport System in California) primarily depends on sociodemographics such as gender, age, travel party, and race. However, results also indicate effects of contextual variables such as travel duration and time of day, which are particularly relevant for discriminating between different segments of activities while traveling. It is argued that a better understanding of time allocation during travel and the related concept of multitasking is crucial for better estimates of the value of time savings. These enhanced understandings should contribute to several discussions on time use in society and ultimately be used to develop dynamic activity-based travel demand models.
The feasibility of new shopping centers is largely related to their relative location and spending power in the trade area. Commercial developers, retailers, and retail planners need information about the likely impact of new retail developments on consumer choice behavior. Several types of consumer choice models have been applied to assess the effects of retail developments.However, most of these models are based on the so-called independence of irrelevant alternatives assumption, and the variables of interest are included in the models in some indirect manner. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how substitution effects in consumer shopping behavior can be estimated as a function of marketing strategies or planning scenarios. We focus on the universal or "mother" logit model in a decompositional framework.The mother logit model represents a generalization of conventional multinomial logit models in that the utility of alternatives depends not only on their attributes, but also upon the attributes of other alternatives in the choice set. These so-called cross-effects represent corrections on the utilities as predicted by the conventional multinomial logit model to account for substitution and other effects. The mother logit model was applied to predict the likely effects of a number of proposed actions to improve the attractiveness of some shopping centers in the Eindhoven region, The Netherlands. Rather than using attributes of shopping centers, possible planning actions were used to specify the utility function of the mother logit model. The model was estimated using choice data observed in hypothetical situations, created according to the principles of experimental design
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