The activity-based travel demand model recognizes that travel is derived
from the demand for activity participation distributed in space. The
focus on intra-household interactions and linkages between people’s
behavior and social and physical environment has been identified as
emerging features of the activity-based approach that would be important
to travel behavior research. The dissertation is dedicated to an
in-depth exploration of the within-household interactions by theoretical
specification and empirical development of the household activity time
allocation models based on a utility maximization framework with the
household as the unit of analysis. Furthermore, the dissertation also
aims to propose a model of the household activity scheduling process
primarily focusing on task allocation mechanisms on the basis of the
human agents adjusting themselves to the built social and physical
environment.
Development of the activity time allocation model in this dissertation
includes two types of structural time allocation models. First, the
collective models based on two assumptions that household heads have
their own utility functions and that decisions by them reach
Pareto-efficient outcomes are introduced to develop intra-household
activity time allocation models for leisure demand and housework
activity. Secondly, intra-household time allocation to housework
activity is further examined through the estimation of time allocation
to the different types of activities by the different types of household
members along with extensive exploration of various theories and
identification of related interactions.
This dissertation proposes a household activity scheduling process a
model design based on a weekly pattern system, which is expected to keep
various advantages compared to a deterministic daily model system. Along
with learning and adaptation procedures, the human being as a learning
agent is designed to prepare strategic plans of behavior to achieve
individual goals through interactive environments, and operationalize
those plans via activity execution requiring the participation of other
agents. At the household level, the household and its members as
decision agents are also designed to optimize the allocation of the
available household labor resource under the presence of the
uncertainties of the physical and social environments. After describing
the mathematical framework and solution procedure, a simulation
experiment is conducted within a hypothetical environment to demonstrate
how the proposed model works.
