IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v158y2022icp62-74.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of residential choice on the travel behavior of young adults

Author

Listed:
  • Shin, Jaeyong
  • Tilahun, Nebiyou

Abstract

Several studies have shown that the travel behavior of young adults in the United States in the past two decades differed from that of prior generations. On average, recent young adults drove fewer miles, owned fewer vehicles and made use of public transit more often. A higher share of young adults also chose to live in cities. This study examines the relationship between the location decision of young adults and their travel behavior. We examine how being a young adult and other socioeconomic variables are associated with residential location decisions, and how these in turn affect vehicle ownership, mode choice and travel distance. Our analysis uses household travel survey data from the Seattle regions collected in 2006 and 2017 and employs a recursive structural equation model to examine these questions. We find that young adult households were more likely to live closer to the city center and to have fewer vehicles than older ones. Fewer young adults also chose to own vehicles in 2017 than in 2006. While young adults made more use of non-automobile modes and had fewer person miles traveled, we find that these effects were more due to their residential location and vehicle ownership decisions than due to direct preferences about mode or distance traveled. These findings suggest that significant changes would be expected in the mode use and miles traveled among young adults if their residential location or vehicle ownership preferences change significantly due to life cycle or other factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Shin, Jaeyong & Tilahun, Nebiyou, 2022. "The role of residential choice on the travel behavior of young adults," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 62-74.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:158:y:2022:i:c:p:62-74
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2021.11.016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856421003013
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tra.2021.11.016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reid Ewing & Robert Cervero, 2010. "Travel and the Built Environment," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(3), pages 265-294.
    2. Dowell Myers, 2016. "Peak Millennials: Three Reinforcing Cycles That Amplify the Rise and Fall of Urban Concentration by Millennials," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(6), pages 928-947, November.
    3. Noreen C. McDonald, 2015. "Are Millennials Really the "Go-Nowhere" Generation?," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 81(2), pages 90-103, April.
    4. Jie Lin & Liang Long, 2008. "What neighborhood are you in? Empirical findings of relationships between household travel and neighborhood characteristics," Transportation, Springer, vol. 35(6), pages 739-758, November.
    5. Alexa Delbosc & Graham Currie, 2013. "Causes of Youth Licensing Decline: A Synthesis of Evidence," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 271-290, May.
    6. Kim S. So & Peter F. Orazem & Daniel M. Otto, 2001. "The Effects of Housing Prices, Wages, and Commuting Time on Joint Residential and Job Location Choices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(4), pages 1036-1048.
    7. Klein, Nicholas J. & Smart, Michael J., 2017. "Millennials and car ownership: Less money, fewer cars," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 20-29.
    8. Oakil, Abu Toasin Md & Manting, Dorien & Nijland, Hans, 2016. "Determinants of car ownership among young households in the Netherlands: The role of urbanisation and demographic and economic characteristics," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 229-235.
    9. Kuhnimhof, Tobias & Buehler, Ralph & Wirtz, Matthias & Kalinowska, Dominika, 2012. "Travel trends among young adults in Germany: increasing multimodality and declining car use for men," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 443-450.
    10. Wang, Xize, 2019. "Has the relationship between urban and suburban automobile travel changed across generations? Comparing Millennials and Generation Xers in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 107-122.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hui Zhang & Li Zhang & Yanjun Liu & Lele Zhang, 2023. "Understanding Travel Mode Choice Behavior: Influencing Factors Analysis and Prediction with Machine Learning Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-20, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Vos, Jonas & Alemi, Farzad, 2020. "Are young adults car-loving urbanites? Comparing young and older adults’ residential location choice, travel behavior and attitudes," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 986-998.
    2. Nash, Sean & Mitra, Raktim, 2019. "University students' transportation patterns, and the role of neighbourhood types and attitudes," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 200-211.
    3. Melia, Steve & Chatterjee, Kiron & Stokes, Gordon, 2018. "Is the urbanisation of young adults reducing their driving?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 444-456.
    4. Kailai Wang & Xize Wang, 2022. "Generational Differences in Automobility: Comparing America's Millennials and Gen Xers Using Gradient Boosting Decision Trees," Papers 2206.11056, arXiv.org.
    5. Krueger, Rico & Rashidi, Taha H. & Vij, Akshay, 2018. "X vs. Y: An Analysis of Intergenerational Differences in Transport Mode Use Among Young Adults," SocArXiv unezy, Center for Open Science.
    6. Ralph, Kelcie & Delbosc, Alexa, 2017. "I’m multimodal, aren’t you? How ego-centric anchoring biases experts’ perceptions of travel patterns," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 283-293.
    7. Haseeb, Attiya & Mitra, Raktim, 2023. "Do environmentally sustainable travel behaviours contribute to transportation-related social exclusion?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    8. Circella, Giovanni & Alemi, Farzad & Tiedeman, Kate & Berliner, Rosaria M & Lee, Yongsung & Fulton, Lew & Mokhtarian, Patricia L & Handy , Susan, 2017. "What Affects Millennials’ Mobility? PART II: The Impact of Residential Location, Individual Preferences and Lifestyles on Young Adults’ Travel Behavior in California," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt5kc117kj, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    9. Wang, Xize, 2019. "Has the relationship between urban and suburban automobile travel changed across generations? Comparing Millennials and Generation Xers in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 107-122.
    10. Delbosc, Alexa & Naznin, Farhana, 2019. "Future life course and mobility: A latent class analysis of young adults in Victoria, Australia," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 104-116.
    11. Ali Etezady & F. Atiyya Shaw & Patricia L. Mokhtarian & Giovanni Circella, 2021. "What drives the gap? Applying the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method to examine generational differences in transportation-related attitudes," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 857-883, April.
    12. Ralph, Kelcie & Voulgaris, Carole Turley & Taylor, Brian D. & Blumenberg, Evelyn & Brown, Anne E., 2016. "Millennials, built form, and travel insights from a nationwide typology of U.S. neighborhoods," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 218-226.
    13. Klein, Nicholas J. & Smart, Michael J., 2017. "Millennials and car ownership: Less money, fewer cars," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 20-29.
    14. Delbosc, Alexa & Nakanishi, Hitomi, 2017. "A life course perspective on the travel of Australian millennials," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 319-336.
    15. Klinger, Thomas, 2017. "Moving from monomodality to multimodality? Changes in mode choice of new residents," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 221-237.
    16. Deka, Devajyoti, 2018. "Exploration of millennials' perception of spending on cities, mass transit, and highways," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 224-232.
    17. Xize Wang, 2022. "Has the Relationship between Urban and Suburban Automobile Travel Changed across Generations? Comparing Millennials and Generation Xers in the United States," Papers 2206.10601, arXiv.org.
    18. Blumenberg, Evelyn & Ralph, Kelcie & Smart, Michael & Taylor, Brian D., 2016. "Who knows about kids these days? Analyzing the determinants of youth and adult mobility in the U.S. between 1990 and 2009," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 39-54.
    19. Richard Grimal, 2018. "Are The Millenials Less Car-Oriented ? Literature Review And Empirical Findings," Post-Print hal-02164941, HAL.
    20. Meng Zhou & Donggen Wang, 2019. "Investigating inter-generational changes in activity-travel behavior: a disaggregate approach," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 1643-1687, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:158:y:2022:i:c:p:62-74. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.