Modeling residential sorting effects to understand the impact of the built environment on commute mode choice

Abstract

This paper presents an examination of the significance of residential sorting or self selection effects in understanding the impacts of the built environment on travel choices. Land use and transportation system attributes are often treated as exogenous variables in models of travel behavior. Such models ignore the potential self selection processes that may be at play wherein households and individuals choose to locate in areas or built environments that are consistent with their lifestyle and transportation preferences, attitudes, and values. In this paper, a simultaneous model of residential location choice and commute mode choice that accounts for both observed and unobserved taste variations that may contribute to residential self selection is estimated on a survey sample extracted from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area household travel survey. Model results show that both observed and unobserved residential self selection effects do exist; however, even after accounting for these effects, it is found that built environment attributes can indeed significantly impact commute mode choice behavior.The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the model findings for policy planning.

Car ownership as a mediating variable in car travel behaviour research using a structural equation modelling approach to identify its dual relationship

“…after controlling for residential self-selection, the built environment was found to have little effect on travel behaviour. However, Bhat and Guo (2007) and Pinjari et al (2007) state the opposite.…”

“…However, statistical results can mask underlying linkages that are more important and of which the built environment characteristics are only a proxy. For example, most recently, there is a growing body of literature on the relationship between the built environment and personal characteristics (e.g., Bagley and Mokhtarian, 2002;Bhat and Guo, 2007;Cao et al, 2006, Pinjari et al, 2007. This research question refers to the issue of residential self-selection: people might self-select themselves into different residential neighbourhoods.…”

Residential dissonance and mode choice

“…Residential self-selection or residential sorting has been identified as one of such accidental variables (Handy and Clifton, 2001). It is referred to as an individual's inclination to choose a particular neighbourhood according to their travel abilities, needs, and preferences (Guo and Chen, 2007;Litman, 2012;Pinjari et al, 2007). Travel attitude, which is often difficult to measure, has been identified as a potential source of residential self-selection (Mokhtarian and Cao, 2008).…”

“…Studies that have analysed cross sectional data have incorporated a range of methods such as an instrumental variables model (Boarnet and Sarmiento, 1998;Greenwald and Boarnet, 2001;Khattak and Rodriguez, 2005;Vance and Hedel, 2007), a joint choice model (Bhat and Guo, 2007;Cervero and Duncan, 2008;Pinjari et al, 2007), a cross-sectional structural equation model (SEM) (Bagley and Mokhtarian, 2002), and a path choice model (Guo, 2009). In contrast, for a longitudinal analysis, data are collected from the same person over two or more time periods, and it is assumed that self-selection effects are nullified.…”

Bicycle commuting in the Netherlands: An analysis of modal shift and its dependence on life cycle and mobility events

“…The concept that residential or job location are (partly) determined by the preferences for daily travel has been termed self-selection in the transportation literature. Using either dedicated surveys including attitudinal and preference items (Schwanen & Mokhtarian, 2005) or advanced econometric methods (Pinjari, Pendyala, Bhat, & Wadell, 2007), self-selection has been shown to be at least partly responsible for the correlation between land-use patterns and travel behavior, and is likely to be associated with more dynamic relationships between vehicle ownership and job and residential location on the one hand and commute mode change on the other hand.…”