Information on the number and types of communication activities (including travel) engaged in over a 4-day period, at 2 points in time and 6 months apart, was collected from 91 respondents in the context of the introduction of a community network to the city of Davis, California. Three major types of communication were measured: personal meetings, transfer of an information object, and electronic. A system of structural equations was developed and estimated, expressing the number of instances of each type of communication at Time 2 as a function of: the number of instances of each type at Time 1, the elapsed time between measurements, and exogenous sociodemographic variables. All "own" lagged effects were found to be positive and highly significant. The elapsed time variable was always positive and significant; these effects indicate net generation of communication activities over time. Significant "cross" lagged effects were mostly positive, indicating the presence of some complementarity effects across modes. However, relationships specifically between electronic forms of communication and personal trips were not significant in either direction for the final models. Several exogenous variables were significant in logical ways.
Samenvatting