Effects of neighborhood setting and intra-neighborhood location on shopping travel behavior of residents in traditional neighborhoods

This study investigates how travel decisions of traditional neighborhood (TN) residents vary spatially within neighborhood and across neighborhoods of different regional settings using an activity-based approach. The primary focus is on shopping travel decisions, specifically to mode and destination choices for home-based shopping tours, and household shopping tour generation. A nested-logit shopping model was constructed to consider five dimensions of shopping travel decisions: household tour generation, participating party, shopping tour type, mode and destination choices. The choice set of the destination choice model was uniquely constructed to separately represent the effects of neighborhood accessibility (characterizing how well a residential location interconnects to stores within the neighborhood) and regional accessibility (characterizing how well a residential location can access outside-neighborhood opportunities within the region). The model was calibrated using travel data collected in three traditional neighborhoods in the Puget Sound, Washington.; Our simulation results reveal that both neighborhood and regional accessibility have interrelated effects on the mode destination choice decisions for home-based shopping-only tours of traditional neighborhood residents, resulting in spatial variations of the travel decisions both within neighborhood and across neighborhoods. In addition, these variations were found to differ across income groups and day of week. Our simulations also show that residential locations have virtually no impact on overall household shopping tours, but seem to have considerable effects on decisions related to the types of shopping tours being generated and mode used. Finally, the study also found that reorienting the mixed-use core or layout design may potentially draw more localized shopping travel.