Recently, several efforts have been made to include individuals' attitudes, values, and orientations within travel behavior research. The restrictions of the traditional modeling variables become obvious when one is trying to explain changes in travel patterns related to changes in Western societies. Traditional modeling efforts also neglect the intrinsic dimensions of traveling and of nonwork travel. A lifestyle approach has been used to construct mobility styles by applying factor and cluster analysis to leisure and mobility orientations. A data set was collected in four neighborhoods of Cologne (Germany). The analysis focuses on leisure travel on weekends, because it is assumed that mobility styles are more important for leisure than for work-related traveling. The key question is whether the utility of mobility styles as a tool for the analysis of travel behavior can be demonstrated. The results indicate, first, that there is a correlation of mobility styles with several other factors, such as personal and household characteristics, availability of transport modes, and urban form elements (e.g., residential neighborhood, garden ownership, and dwelling type). Furthermore, a correlation is observed between mobility styles and participation, frequency, and car use for leisure travel. Finally, multivariate analysis indicates that the mobility styles largely explain the participation in traveling for different leisure purposes and the distances traveled by car. For the mode choice, other factors such as availability of transport modes and workday use of a transport mode appear to be more important than the mobility style.
Abstract