BACKGROUND
A variety of complex, interacting factors influence travel behavior (including how, where, and when people travel) in the United States. Household and personal travel is affected primarily by where individuals live and work, which in turn, is influenced by community characteristics (e.g., density, geography, available infrastructure, employment locations, institutional arrangements, and economic conditions). Transportation planners have long sought to analyze travel in terms of standard factors (e.g., age, income, sex, car ownership, service availability, and/or price elasticities).

Research, to date, has failed to reveal a critically important dimension of travel behavior--how travel decisions are affected by travelers' larger social context. To address this issue, this research is intended to illuminate what has been referred to as "learning theory" or "social learning theory"---to better understand how people learn from one another through observation, imitation, and modeling, and how this learning is transferred. Research into learning theory in general, and social learning in particular, will produce insight into how and when (i.e., what stages of life) individual and social perceptions and preferences, regarding where people choose to live and work and how they travel, are learned.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this research is to guide public transportation planners and marketers; multimodal transportation planners, modelers, researchers; and policy makers in understanding how travelers' choices are influenced by their larger social context. The research will employ tenets of learning theory, including social learning theory, to examine how individuals choose where to live and work and how they travel; the implications of this examination on the planning, design, and marketing of transportation systems will be reported.

Status:  The project is completed and published as TCRP Report 123.  Appendices to the contractor's final report are available on the TRB website.