Modeling household-level party composition behavior for multiparty activities: a random parameter nested logit modeling approach

Abstract

This study presents findings of a household-level party composition model for multiparty activities. It exploits data from a comprehensive Household Travel Survey conducted by Chicago Metropolitan Agency of Planning. The study estimates a random parameter nested logit model to capture households’ unobserved preference heterogeneity and non-proportional substitution patterns in terms of activity party composition for multiparty activities. A wide variety of household demographics, activity attributes and residential neighborhood characteristics are examined in this paper. The magnitude of the impacts of the determinants are tested in this study by analyzing the elasticity of the variables, which suggests that household demographics and attributes of the multiparty activities have significant effects on the household-level activity party composition. Residential neighborhood characteristics, although somewhat less impactful, still play a meaningful role. This model will be implemented within the POLARIS transportation systems simulator to improve the activity generation modeling workflow, and the prediction accuracy of various activity-travel components.