Evaluation of Different Recruitment Methods: Longitudinal, Web-Based, Pan-European Physical Activity Through Sustainable Transport Approaches (PASTA) Project

BACKGROUND: Sufficient sample size and minimal sample bias are core requirements for empirical data analyses. Combining opportunistic recruitment with a Web-based survey and data-collection platform yields new benefits over traditional recruitment approaches. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to report the success of different recruitment methods and obtain data on participants' characteristics, participation behavior, recruitment rates, and representativeness of the sample. METHODS: A longitudinal, Web-based survey was implemented as part of the European PASTA (Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches) project, between November 2014 and December 2016. During this period, participants were recruited from 7 European cities on a rolling basis. A standardized guide on recruitment strategy was developed for all cities, to reach a sufficient number of adult participants. To make use of the strengths and minimize weakness, a combination of different opportunistic recruitment methods was applied. In addition, the random sampling approach was applied in the city of Örebro. To reduce the attrition rate and improve real-time monitoring, the Web-based platform featured a participant's and a researchers' user interface and dashboard. RESULTS: Overall, 10,691 participants were recruited; most people found out about the survey through their workplace or employer (2300/10691, 21.51%), outreach promotion (2219/10691, 20.76%), and social media (1859/10691, 17.39%). The average number of questionnaires filled in per participant varied significantly between the cities (P<.001), with the highest number in Zurich (11.0, SE 0.33) and the lowest in Örebro (4.8, SE 0.17). Collaboration with local organizations, the use of Facebook and mailing lists, and direct street recruitment were the most effective approaches in reaching a high share of participants (P<.001). Considering the invested working hours, Facebook was one of the most time-efficient methods. Compared with the cities' census data, the composition of study participants was broadly representative in terms of gender distribution; however, the study included younger and better-educated participants. CONCLUSIONS: We observed that offering a mixed recruitment approach was highly effective in achieving a high participation rate. The highest attrition rate and the lowest average number of questionnaires filled in per participant were observed in Örebro, which also recruited participants through random sampling. These findings suggest that people who are more interested in the topic are more willing to participate and stay in a survey than those who are selected randomly and may not have a strong connection to the research topic. Although direct face-to-face contacts were very effective with respect to the number of recruited participants, recruiting people through social media was not only effective but also very time efficient. The collected data are based on one of the largest recruited longitudinal samples with a common recruitment strategy in different European cities

Effective management of urban short-term parking zones

W artykule zawarto krótkie omówienie dwóch przykładowych narzędzi kierowania strefami krótkotrwałego parkowania oraz realizowanych przez te narzędzia funkcji. Po pierwsze zostanie przedstawiony prototyp systemu zbierającego informacje w czasie rzeczywistym dla pokazania stopnia zajętości strefy krótkotrwałego parkowania, Po drugie zostaną omówione wyniki wdrożonej w Wiedniu strategii, która polegała na wzroście opłat za parkowanie, aby wpływać na zachowania mieszkańców związane z parkowaniem. Przykłady te mogą być traktowane jako modelowe i stanowić wzór do naśladowania w innych miastach, jako że strefy krótkoterminowego parkowania i parkowanie z wykorzystaniem telefonu komórkowego są obecnie uważane za najnowocześniejsze w wielu miastach Europy i należy oczekiwać, że ich wykorzystanie będzie się rozprzestrzeniać dalej.The paper will give an overview on the two examples of steering tools for short-term parking zones and its functions. First, a prototype of a real-time information system for showing the occupancy rate of short-term parking zones will be presented. Second, empirical parking survey was also used to evaluate the effects caused by another strategy implemented in Vienna, considering increase of parking fee, to influence the parking behaviour of citizens. These examples can serve as a role models for other cities, since short-term parking zones and mobile phone parking is state of the art in many European cities, and its use will increase elsewhere as well

VISTA Status Report

this paper was partially supported by the Special Research Program SFB F011 &quot;AURORA&quot; of the Austrian Research Fund. Contents 1 Lithography Simulation in VISTA

A pooled RP/SP mode, route and destination choice model to investigate mode and user-type effects in the value of travel time savings

Being of great importance for transportation policy appraisals, we investigate mode and user-type effects in the value of travel time savings (VTTS) using a pooled RP/SP Mixed Logit modeling approach for mode, route and destination choice data. For a representative sample of Austrian workers, our analysis reveals population-weighted median VTTS estimates for car (12.3 Euro/h), public transportation (PT; 8.1 Euro/h), bike (11.7 Euro/h) and walk (10.2 Euro/h). Considering only those respondents who have used car and PT in the observation period (and thus are familiar with both modes), we find that four user characteristics are able to decompose this substantial difference in median VTTS between car and PT (i.e. the total mode effect) of about 4.9 Euro/h: Posterior means of individual and mode-specific VTTS distributions reveal a reduced mode effect for high income (4.6 Euro/h), female (4.5 Euro/h), low educated (4.3 Euro/h) and urban (3.0 Euro/h) user groups. Our results indicate that in the case of Austrian workers, characteristics of the mode are more important than characteristics of the users, and that the travel time spent in PT is valued less than in a car for all investigated user groups

A joint time-assignment and expenditure-allocation model: Value of leisure and value of time assigned to travel for specific population segments

Based on a time-use model with a sound theoretical basis and carefully collected data for Austria, the value of leisure (VoL) for different population segments has been estimated. Through the combination of these results with mode-specific values of travel time savings from a related study based on the same data, the first mode-specific values of time assigned to travel (VTAT) were calculated. Data was collected using a Mobility-Activity-Expenditure Diary, a novel survey format which gathers all activities, expenditures, and travel decisions from the same individuals for 1 week in a diary-based format. The average VoL is 8.17 €/h, which is below the mean wage of 12.14 €/h, indicating that the value of work is, on average, negative. Regarding the reliability of the VoL, we show its sensitivity to the variance of working time in a sample, something that has been ignored in previous studies and could be used to avoid inadequate segmentation. We controlled this effect in the analysis of the heterogeneity of the VoL across the population by estimating the parameters from the total (unsegmented) dataset with single interaction terms. We find that the VTAT is strictly negative for walking, predominantly negative for cycling and car, and predominantly positive for public transport with 0.27 €/h on average. The positive VTAT for public transport is a strong indication for the importance of travel conditions, in turn suggesting that improvements in travel conditions of public transport might be as important as investing in shorter travel times.ISSN:0049-4488ISSN:1572-943

The value of travel time savings and the value of leisure in Zurich: Estimation, decomposition and policy implications

We use state-of-the art estimation approaches to obtain mode-specific values of travel time savings (VTTS) based on pooled RP/SP travel choice data of Zurich workers. Unlike the large majority of time valuation studies, we also have data on the respondents’ time-use and expenditure allocation, which enables us to estimate their value of leisure (VoL),i.e. the opportunity value of liberated time when the duration of a committed activity, such as travel, is reduced. We use the estimates of the VoL and the VTTS to derive the value of time assigned to travel (VTAT) – the monetary value of the direct (dis-)utility derived from the conditions experienced while traveling. Linking the VTTS and VoL at the individual-level allows for a detailed analysis of VTAT distributions. We obtain median VTTS for car and motorbike (MIV) of 30.6 CHF/h, carpooling (CP) of 27.7 CHF/h, carsharing (CS) of 26.7 CHF/h, walk of 26.7 CHF/h, bike of 18.2 CHF/h and public transportation (PT) of 14.8 CHF/h. The median VoL amounts to 25.2 CHF/h. We find that MIV, CS and CP perform worst in terms of VTAT (as indicated by values smaller than zero), showing that the perceived travel comfort all in car modes (private, shared and pooled) is substantially lower than for PT and bike, where the VTAT are greater than zero. From a transportation policy perspective, our results suggest that travel comfort matters greatly and investing in the quality of travel should therefore obtain more attention. However, from a PT operator’s point of view, our results indicate that in the case of Zurich, investing in faster connections may exhibit a higher marginal impact on user benefits, since the VoL is relatively high, while travel comfort is perceived as high already.ISSN:0965-8564ISSN:1879-237

Evaluating different recruitment methods in a longitudinal survey: Findings from the pan-European PASTA project

Background: Sufficient sample size and minimal sample bias are core requirements for empirical data analyses. Combining opportunistic recruitment with a Web-based survey and data-collection platform yields new benefits over traditional recruitment approaches. Objective: This paper aims to report the success of different recruitment methods and obtain data on participants’ characteristics, participation behavior, recruitment rates, and representativeness of the sample. Methods: A longitudinal, Web-based survey was implemented as part of the European PASTA (Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches) project, between November 2014 and December 2016. During this period, participants were recruited from 7 European cities on a rolling basis. A standardized guide on recruitment strategy was developed for all cities, to reach a sufficient number of adult participants. To make use of the strengths and minimize weakness, a combination of different opportunistic recruitment methods was applied. In addition, the random sampling approach was applied in the city of Örebro. To reduce the attrition rate and improve real-time monitoring, the Web-based platform featured a participant’s and a researchers’ user interface and dashboard. Results: Overall, 10,691 participants were recruited; most people found out about the survey through their workplace or employer (2300/10691, 21.51%), outreach promotion (2219/10691, 20.76%), and social media (1859/10691, 17.39%). The average number of questionnaires filled in per participant varied significantly between the cities (P<.001), with the highest number in Zurich (11.0, SE 0.33) and the lowest in Örebro (4.8, SE 0.17). Collaboration with local organizations, the use of Facebook and mailing lists, and direct street recruitment were the most effective approaches in reaching a high share of participants (P<.001). Considering the invested working hours, Facebook was one of the most time-efficient methods. Compared with the cities’ census data, the composition of study participants was broadly representative in terms of gender distribution; however, the study included younger and better-educated participants. Conclusions: We observed that offering a mixed recruitment approach was highly effective in achieving a high participation rate. The highest attrition rate and the lowest average number of questionnaires filled in per participant were observed in Örebro, which also recruited participants through random sampling. These findings suggest that people who are more interested in the topic are more willing to participate and stay in a survey than those who are selected randomly and may not have a strong connection to the research topic. Although direct face-to-face contacts were very effective with respect to the number of recruited participants, recruiting people through social media was not only effective but also very time efficient. The collected data are based on one of the largest recruited longitudinal samples with a common recruitment strategy in different European cities