Analysis of groups’ multi-day leisure travel behaviors

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the behavior characteristics and spatiotemporal distribution of groups’ multi-day leisure travel, and to quantify the impact of the elderly and children on group travel choices. Based on questionnaire and social media data, three choice models and an agent-based simulation model were established to explore the micro-choice behavior characteristics and the macro-spatiotemporal distribution of groups’ multi-day leisure travel by arranging the travel rules and by simulating the route of travel groups. The results of data analysis and simulation indicate that: (1) Travel groups with the elderly or children are less affected by the high-speed railway network and prefer self-driving traveling. (2) Groups with the elderly or children tend to travel for more days and visit more cities, while groups without the elderly or children pursue high-quality tourism resources. (3) High-quality tourist attractions bring more tourists to nearby tourist attractions, promoting regional tourism cooperation.

Keywords:

• Groups’ leisure travel
• agent-based simulation
• the elderly and children
• spatiotemporal distribution
• travel network analysis

Disclosure statement

On behalf of all the authors, the corresponding author wants to declare that there are no competing interests with any other studies exclusive to the study presented in this manuscript.

Ethics statement

Tsinghua University does not require ethical approval for non-interventional studies such as questionnaire surveys.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant number 51778340.