The effect of soft variables on travel mode choices

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to highlight how soft variables play an important role in travel mode choices in the New York metropolitan area. This study focuses on the effects of racial/ethnic affinities and travel purposes on travel mode choices. This study finds that racial/ethnic affinities play a different role in travel mode choices according to racial/ethnic groups. For instance, racial/ethnic affinities play a negative role in carpooling of whites for leisure, unlike other racial/ethnic groups. This result shows that the general hypothesis is wrong, that is, living in racial/ethnic neighborhoods has a positive impact on carpooling. This study highlights that travel mode choices are differentiated by travel purposes across racial/ethnic groups. For example, Hispanics are positively related to the household carpool for shopping, whereas they show a negative probability of that for school. The results show that urban planners should take soft variables into account for travel mode choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft variables
• racial/ethnic affinities
• travel mode choices
• travel purposes
• carpooling
• New York
• multinomial logit model
• transportation planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.