Abstract
This research concerns the relationships between the patterns of activities pursued in home-based trip chains and the characteristics of the persons making the chains. The data source is a one-week travel diary reported by persons over eleven years of age in the Netherlands in 1984. All home-based trip chains, including both simple two-link chains and more complex ones, were classified on the basis of the sequence of away-from-home activities. Twenty types were distinguished. The presence or absence of these trip-chain types were then explained in terms of the personal and household characteristics of the travellers using non-linear canonical correlation analysis. This analysis technique can accommodate multiple dependent variables and nominally-scaled (categorical) variables in both the independent and dependent variable sets. Determined are the category scores for each independent variable that are optimal in explaining patterns in the dependent chain-type variables. Also determined are the optimal combinations of the two variable sets. These results capture the relationships between the sequences of activities in trip chains and the variables age, sex, working status, household income, stage in the family life cycle, household car ownership, and residential location. The most effective variable was found to be life cycle, followed by age and income.