Gender differences in space–time mobility patterns in a postcommunist city: a case study based on mobile positioning in the suburbs of Tallinn

Abstract

The reflection of gender roles in spatial mobility has been in the research focus of geographers as these issues are related to important aspects of the spatial organisation of society and planning such as the location of activities and services, the use of transportation, and housing policy. In this paper we compare gender-driven differences in the activity spaces of a new suburban community in the rapidly transformed former Soviet country Estonia. The authors used a questionnaire survey based on 573 households, and during eight days in 2006 tracked 256 people by mobile positioning. The results show that the space-time behaviour of men and women from the suburbs of Tallinn differs significantly in several aspects: men have larger activity spaces and drive a car more, while women's workplaces are more concentrated in the city centre, they spend more time in suburban homes, and they use more public transportation. Comparing gender differences in Estonia with differences in other countries on the basis of similar studies conducted in Western countries, it appears that while the distribution of daily activities and the use of transportation are quite similar, there are differences in the location of workplaces.

Explaining the travelling behaviour of migrants using Facebook audience estimates

“…In line with the literature [ 9 , 10 , 33 , 34 ], the models’ unstandardized coefficients reported in Table 1 show that women travel slightly less than men and the elderly travel less than the young. As shown in Fig 3 the GDI plays a much more important role in explaining gender inequalities in travelling behaviour that the gender categorical variable.…”

“…Masso, Silm, & Ahas [ 9 ] studied domestic and international spatial mobility by age, gender and language (Estonian or Russian) using passive mobile positioning data from an Estonian mobile phone operator. Silm, Ahas, & Nuga [ 10 ] studied gender mobility difference using both mobile position data and questionnaire survey in Estonia. Hawelka et al [ 11 ] used Twitter data to estimate the volume of international travellers by country of residence.…”

The measurement of interpersonal interactions with continuous spatiotemporal data: Application to a study of the effects of resource competition on racial group interactions

“…Cho et al (2011), for example, followed participants for approximately 2 years and deduced the spatial location of the participants on the basis of the nearest cell phone tower each time the participant generated or received a call, and also from the recorded geolocations each time a participant generated a "check-in" from their mobile phone on two social network websites (i.e., Gowalla and Brightkite). Intervals may also be regularly spaced, rather than "per-incident" (e.g., cell phone calls), and the timing of intervals between spatial assessments range broadly; for example, spatial assessments have been assessed at 5-min (Eagle et al, 2009), 15-min (Silm, Ahas, & Nuga, 2013), and 30-min (Benkert, Gudmundsson, Hübner, & Wolle, 2008) intervals.…”

Spatial mobility and current travel behaviour in the metropolitan hinterland

“…The post-socialist transformation processes are also related to changes in the spatial aspects of transport behaviour (see e.g. Pucher and Buehler 2005, Krisjane et al 2012or Silm et al 2013. Transport behaviour is a complex category of human behaviour in space and use of the individual transport modes.…”