History dependency in daily activity participation and time allocation for commuters

The role of history dependency in explaining activity-travel patterns of commuters is investigated. Specifically, the extent to which one day's activity engagement affects activity frequencies and activity durations of the next day is examined. The analysis uses 2-day activity survey data collected in 1996 in the San Francisco Bay area. Models of daily activity engagement and time allocation are estimated as a function of the previous day's activity pattern to understand day-to-day dependency in activity engagement. Results from the model estimation effort are used to draw conclusions about the extent to which history dependency exists (within a 2-day time frame) in modeling different activity types. The results suggest there is a strong positive history dependency in activity engagement between days within a 48-h time frame.