In the relatively new field of social activity-travel behavior research, it has often been stated that social relationships have become increasingly physically dispersed in various contemporary societies. If so, this dynamic has enormous consequences on both travel behavior and social support. More explicitly, people have to travel some distance in order to meet, need to plan their social activities further ahead of time, and, sociologically speaking, are at risk of weakening their relationships to friends, immediate family, relatives, etc., due to spatial distance. In this paper, we used a nationwide representative sample to examine the characteristics of Swiss citizens who have named non-local close relationships within the survey. The empirical findings show various characteristics that increase thelikelihood of having close relationships outside one’s community, such asone-person households, higher education, younger cohorts, long-distant commuting, and, interestingly, people who want to spent more time with friends. The paper ends with a discussion of these findings as they concern recent debates in the field of social activity-travel behavior.
Abstract