On modeling departure time choice for home-based social/recreational and shopping trips

The existing literature on departure time choice has primarily focused on work trips. In this paper, we examine departure time choice for non-work trips, which constitute an increasingly large proportion of urban trips. Discrete choice models are estimated for home-based social/recreational and home-based shopping trips using the 1996 activity survey data collected in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. The effects of individual and household socio-demographics, employment attributes, and trip characteristics on departure time choice are presented and discussed. The results indicate that departure time choice for social/recreational trips and shopping trips are determined for the most part by individual/household socio-demographics and employment characteristics, and to a lesser extent by trip level-of-service characteristics. This suggests that departure time for social/recreational and shopping trips are not as flexible as one might expect and are confined to certain times of day because of overall scheduling constraints. The paper concludes by identifying future methodological and empirical extensions of the current research.