Mental map is considered as an individual’s mental representation of his/her spatial cognition. People learn from the environment and add information to their personal mental map. It becomes important when we try to understand the relationships between one’s travel decision processes and their choice sets. The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between individuals’ activity travel patterns and their mental map by exploring people’s spatial cognition, their activity space and related factors. Two-week travel diary and mental maps were collected for the same 57 individuals in Stockholm. Respondents were asked to report their recent trip information in the travel diary and draw their familiar areas in specified maps. The specified maps, to some extent, reflect respondents’ mental maps by transferring this abstract concept from one’s mind to a visual representation. The derived mental maps were manually drawn and transferred from graph to ASCII code in ArcGIS. The visited activity locations on where people travelled during the observed period were used to construct one’s activity space. The key determinants that construct these activity space and mental map will be investigated. Marginal effect of each key variable will be calculated to understand the magnitude of influence of each variable into the spatial distribution of the given individual’s activity space and mental map. The result shows that individual’s activity space is not necessarily within individual mental map. Both activity space and mental map are correlated with individual’s travel pattern factors. Mental map has positive influence to the formation of activity space. The inference of marginal effect is useful for urban planning, promoting transport policies and analyzing the effect of transport infrastructure since it can help to locate the places that constitute individual’s activity space and mental map areas.

Human behaviour produces massive greenhouse gas emissions, which trigger climate change and more unpredictable weather conditions. The fluctuation of daily weather corresponds to variations of everyday travel behaviour. This influence, although is less noticeable, can have a strong impact on the transport system. Specifically, the climate in Sweden is becoming warmer in the recent 10 years. However, it is largely unknown to what extent the change of travel behaviour would respond to the changing weather. Understanding these issues would help analysts and policy makers incorporate local weather and climate within our policy design and infrastructure management. The thesis contains eight papers exploring the weather and climate impacts on individual travel behaviour, each addressing a subset of this topic. Paper I explores the weather impact on individual’s mode choice decisions. In paper II and III, individual’s daily activity time, number of trips/trip chains, travel time and mode shares are jointly modelled. The results highlight the importance of modelling activity-travel variables for different trip purposes respectively. Paper IV develops a namely nested multivariate Tobit model to model activity time allocation trade-offs. In paper V, the roles of weather on trip chaining complexity is explored. A thermal index is introduced to better approximate the effects of the thermal environment. In paper VI, the role of subjective weather perception is investigated. Results confirm that individuals with different socio-demographics would have different subjective weather perception even given similar weather conditions. Paper VII derives the marginal effects of weather variables on transport CO2 emissions. The findings show more CO2 emissions due to the warmer climate in the future. Paper VIII summaries the existing findings in relations between weather variability and travel behaviour, and critically assesses the methodological issues in previous studies. / <p>QC 20160516</p> / Understanding the complexity of changes of travelers’ activity-travel choices and related transport CO2 emissions due to the variation of weather and climate in Sweden (Centre för Transport Studie, projekt kod: 446) / Understanding the impacts of weather and climate change on travel behavior (Centre för Transport Studie, projekt kod: 291)

When a new transport service is introduced, people have to learn and familiarize themselves with the new service before they decide to adopt it. These processes are developed over time, thus produce dynamics in individuals’ behavioural responses towards the service. This affects the demand of the new service, thus affect revenues. Available studies have examined the factors influencing these responses from microeconomic perspectives. The influence of the theory-based subjective factors has not been examined empirically. Understanding these would assist transport and urban planners to design a better marketing strategy to increase the market share of the new service. A change in seasons affect individuals’ activity-travel decisions, thus produce dynamics in activitytravel patterns in different seasons. Individuals’ constraints, in a form of mandatory activities (working/studying), are influencing individuals’ decisions to participate in day-to-day nonmandatory activities (leisure and routine activities). The interdependency between travel demand, time allocation and mode choice that considers interactions between mandatory and non-mandatory activities, in different seasons is less explored. Understanding these would assist transport planners and operators to manage travel demand strategies across different seasons of the year and provide better transportation systems for all individuals. This thesis includes five papers. Paper I explores individuals’ characteristics of the quick-response and the adopters of the new public transport (PT) service and examines the temporal effects. Paper II investigates the subjective factors influencing a quick-response to the new PT service by proposing a modified attitude-behaviour framework. Paper III and IV analyse the effects of seasonal variations and individuals’ constraints on their day-to-day activity-travel decisions and patterns. Paper V analyses the attrition and fatigue in the two-week travel diary panel survey instrument. / <p>QC 20170323</p>

Indian cities have been witnessing rapid transformation due to the synergistic effect of industrialisation, flourishing-economy, motorisation, population explosion, and migration. The alarming increase in travel demand as an after effect of the transformation, and the scarcity in transport infrastructures have exacerbated urban transport issues such as congestion, pollution, and inequity. Due to the escalating cost of transport infrastructure and the scarcity of resources such as space, there has been an increasing interest in promoting sustainable transportation policy measures for the optimum use of existing resources. Such policy measures mostly target the activitytravel behaviour of individuals to bring about desired changes in the transport sector. However, the responses of individuals to most of the measures are complex or unknown. The current ‘commute trip-based’ aggregate travel demand analysis strategy followed in most of the Indian cities is inadequate for providing basic inputs to understand the activity-travel behaviour of individuals under such policy interventions. Furthermore, the current analysis strategy also ignores the activitytravel behaviour of non-workers – who include homemakers, unemployed, and retired individuals – whose inclusion to transportation planning is relevant when the proposed policies are mostly ‘citizen-centric’. Analysis of activity-travel behaviour of non-workers provide important inputs to transportation planning as their activity-travel behaviour, and responses to transportation policies are different from that of workers. However, case studies exploring the activity-travel behaviour of non-workers from Indian cities are very limited. Appraising the practical importance of this subject, the current research undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the activity-travel behaviour of non-workers from a developing country’s context. To fulfil the goal, a series of empirical analysis are conducted on a primary activity-travel weekday survey data collected from Bangalore city. The analysis provides insightful findings and interpretations consistent with a developing country’s perspective. The day-planner format of time use diary, which was observed to have satisfactory performances in developed countries, is apparently have inferior performances in a developing country’s context. Further, the face-to-face method of survey administration is observed to have higher operating and economic efficiencies compared to the drop-off and pick-up method. The comprehensive analysis of activity-travel behaviour of non-workers indicate that comparing with their counterparts in the developed world (e.g. the U.S.), non-workers in Bangalore city are observed to have lower activity participation level (in terms of time allocation and number of stops), higher dependency on walking, lower trip chaining tendency, and a distinct time-of-day preference for departing to activity locations. On the other hand, the analysis shows similarities (mode use and trip chaining) and differences (time allocation and departure time choice) with the findings of the case studies from the developing world (e.g. China). Activity-travel behaviour of non-workers belonging to low-income households is characterised by lower activity participation level, higher dependency on sustainable transport modes, and lower trip chaining propensity, compared to other two income groups (middle and high-income groups). The research also suggests that built environment measures have their highest impacts on non-workers’ travel decisions related to shopping. Finally, the joint analysis of activity participation and travel behaviour of non-workers indicate that in-home maintenance activity duration drives the time allocation and travel behaviour of non-workers, and non-workers trade in-home discretionary activity duration with travel time. The joint analysis also shows that the time spent on children’s and elders’ activity is an important time allocation of its own. Keywords: Activity-travel behaviour, Non-worker, Time Use, Income Groups, India