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Evidence for a conserved quantity in human mobility

Author

Listed:
  • Laura Alessandretti

    (City, University of London
    Technical University of Denmark)

  • Piotr Sapiezynski

    (Technical University of Denmark)

  • Vedran Sekara

    (Technical University of Denmark
    Sony Mobile Communications)

  • Sune Lehmann

    (Technical University of Denmark
    University of Copenhagen)

  • Andrea Baronchelli

    (City, University of London)

Abstract

Recent seminal works on human mobility have shown that individuals constantly exploit a small set of repeatedly visited locations1–3. A concurrent study has emphasized the explorative nature of human behaviour, showing that the number of visited places grows steadily over time4–7. How to reconcile these seemingly contradicting facts remains an open question. Here, we analyse high-resolution multi-year traces of ~40,000 individuals from 4 datasets and show that this tension vanishes when the long-term evolution of mobility patterns is considered. We reveal that mobility patterns evolve significantly yet smoothly, and that the number of familiar locations an individual visits at any point is a conserved quantity with a typical size of ~25. We use this finding to improve state-of-the-art modelling of human mobility4,8. Furthermore, shifting the attention from aggregated quantities to individual behaviour, we show that the size of an individual’s set of preferred locations correlates with their number of social interactions. This result suggests a connection between the conserved quantity we identify, which as we show cannot be understood purely on the basis of time constraints, and the ‘Dunbar number’9,10 describing a cognitive upper limit to an individual’s number of social relations. We anticipate that our work will spark further research linking the study of human mobility and the cognitive and behavioural sciences.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Alessandretti & Piotr Sapiezynski & Vedran Sekara & Sune Lehmann & Andrea Baronchelli, 2018. "Evidence for a conserved quantity in human mobility," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(7), pages 485-491, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:2:y:2018:i:7:d:10.1038_s41562-018-0364-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0364-x
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    Cited by:

    1. Matteo Cinelli & Emanuele Brugnoli & Ana Lucia Schmidt & Fabiana Zollo & Walter Quattrociocchi & Antonio Scala, 2020. "Selective exposure shapes the Facebook news diet," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-17, March.
    2. Filippo Simini & Gianni Barlacchi & Massimilano Luca & Luca Pappalardo, 2021. "A Deep Gravity model for mobility flows generation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, December.
    3. Gerardo Iñiguez & Carlos Pineda & Carlos Gershenson & Albert-László Barabási, 2022. "Dynamics of ranking," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-7, December.
    4. Natasa Kovacic & Tomislav Car & Ljubica Pilepić Stifanich, 2022. "Transport Behaviour, Perceived Experience And Smart Technology Usage Of Tourist Destination Visitors," Economic Thought and Practice, Department of Economics and Business, University of Dubrovnik, vol. 31(2), pages 439-472, december.
    5. Wei, Wei & Feng, Xiangnan, 2023. "Graphical representation and hierarchical decomposition mechanism for vertex-cover solution space," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 458(C).
    6. Cyril Veve & Nicolas Chiabaut, 2020. "Estimation of the shared mobility demand based on the daily regularity of the urban mobility and the similarity of individual trips," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-15, September.
    7. Rampazzo, Pietro, 2024. "“I want to ride my bicycle”: analysing shared mobility in Italy," SocArXiv bd8p4, Center for Open Science.
    8. Hengfang Deng & Daniel P. Aldrich & Michael M. Danziger & Jianxi Gao & Nolan E. Phillips & Sean P. Cornelius & Qi Ryan Wang, 2021. "High-resolution human mobility data reveal race and wealth disparities in disaster evacuation patterns," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-8, December.
    9. Mirzaoglu, Gulbike, 2023. "Essays in economics of crime prevention and behavior under uncertainty," Other publications TiSEM 2365661f-9f4d-4511-ad2f-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Arcagni, Alberto & Grassi, Rosanna & Stefani, Silvana & Torriero, Anna, 2021. "Extending assortativity: An application to weighted social networks," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 774-783.
    11. Allister Loder & Fabienne Cantner & Lennart Adenaw & Nico Nachtigall & David Ziegler & Felix Gotzler & Markus B. Siewert & Stefan Wurster & Sebastian Goerg & Markus Lienkamp & Klaus Bogenberger, 2023. "Germany's nationwide travel experiment in 2022: public transport for 9 Euro per month -- First findings of an empirical study," Papers 2306.08297, arXiv.org.

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