Breaking Down the Daily Use of Places - A Space-Time Typology of Temporary Populations in the Netherlands

In a network society, spurred on by technological, social, and economic factors, the process of land use deconcentration has resulted in various new urban forms such as edge cities and edgeless cities. While the consequences of this process for the distribution of the residential population and travel patterns have been extensively described and analyzed, there has as yet been little investigation of its effect on visitors’ use of places. The aim of this study is to develop a typology of urban, suburban, and rural municipalities located in monocentric and polycentric urban systems on the basis of dimensions of diurnal weekday variations in visitor populations. The dimensions used in this study have been derived from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey. A two-step cluster analysis resulted in five types of municipality: ‘central place’, ‘contemporary node’, ‘self-contained’, ‘mobile children’, and ‘local children’. The results reveal that, compared with monocentric urban systems, settlements in polycentric urban systems are more networked; that is, suburbs in these systems are capable of attracting a substantial share of working visitors who have their residence in the core city (‘contemporary node’) and school children from other suburban and central city communities (‘mobile children’). Outside the urban systems the ‘self-contained’ type, which contains people at work, learning, and in recreation locally and lacks the inflow of visitors from outside, is over represented.

Breaking Down the Daily Use of Places A Space-Time Typology of Temporary Populations in the Netherlands

Abstract. In a network society, spurred on by technological, social, and economic factors, the process of land use deconcentration has resulted in various new urban forms such as edge cities and edgeless cities. While the consequences of this process for the distribution of the residential population and travel patterns have been extensively described and analyzed, there has as yet been little investigation of the effect on visitors' use of places. Using the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey, we developed a typology of urban, suburban, and rural municipalities located in monocentric and polycentric urban systems on the basis of dimensions of diurnal weekday variations in visitor populations. A two-step cluster analysis resulted in five types of municipality: 'central place', 'contemporary node', 'self-contained', 'mobile children', and 'local children'. [Key words: temporary populations, use of places, polycentricity, cluster analysis, the Netherlands

Recruiting Young and Urban Groups into a Probability-Based Online Panel by Promoting Smartphone Use

A sizable minority of all web surveys are nowadays completed on smartphones. People who choose a smartphone for Internet-related tasks are different from people who mainly use a PC or tablet. Smartphone use is particularly high among the young and urban. We have to make web surveys attractive for smartphone completion in order not to lose these groups of smartphone users. In this paper we study how to encourage people to complete surveys on smartphones in order to attract hard-to-reach subgroups of the population. We experimentally test new features of a survey-friendly design: we test two versions of an invitation letter to a survey, a new questionnaire lay-out, and autoforwarding. The goal of the experiment is to evaluate whether the new survey design attracts more smartphone users, leads to a better survey experience on smartphones and results in more respondents signing up to become a member of a probability-based online panel. Our results show that the invitation letter that emphasizes the possibility for smartphone completion does not yield a higher response rate than the control condition, nor do we find differences in the socio-demographic background of respondents. We do find that slightly more respondents choose a smartphone for survey completion. The changes in the layout of the questionnaire do lead to a change in survey experience on the smartphone. Smartphone respondents need 20% less time to complete the survey when the questionnaire includes autoforwarding. However, we do not find that respondents evaluate the survey better, nor are they more likely to become a member of the panel when asked at the end of the survey. We conclude with a discussion of autoforwarding in web surveys and methods to attract smartphone users to web surveys

In perpetual motion. Time-space variations in the characteristics of visitor populations and the performance of places

The last few decennia have seen a marked increase in the fragmentation of individual activity and travel patterns in time and space. As a result of an increased spatial-temporal complexity in their everyday lives and a larger action radius, individuals nowadays enjoy many new opportunities, but also face new constraints for participation in activities and travel. As a result of these developments, the activity patterns of individuals no longer coincide with the physical morphology of the city. Instead, patterns of human interaction have crystallized in many new and complex ways. The greatest change of all, however, is the shift of the conditions in time and space in which physical interactions occur. As a result of land-use deconcentration in various forms, today's urban landscape is characterized by a multiplicity of urban forms and systems ranging from monocentric to polycentric urban systems and sprawl. Accordingly, the size and composition of the population temporarily present in an area are expected to be related to this increased multiplicity. More specifically, the characteristics of these visitor populations may increasingly depend on the time-space interdependencies between each location and all other locations. From a policy perspective, the networked character of urban space and human interaction required an insight into the impact of visitor populations on the economic, environmental, and social performance of places. In addition to residential populations, visitor populations may increasingly determine this performance. For planning to be capable of taking into account these visitor populations and their impacts, it is necessary to understand the relative position of an area in terms of flows of people from different origins entering and accumulating in that area at different times of the day, without suggesting a closed network system. Planners and plans, however, still try to grasp the increased complexity in the performance of places in rather traditional conceptualizations of spatial and temporal organization. Traditional planning instruments concentrate too much on areas as static places rather than places structured around and by highly diverse (rhythms of) flows of people, goods, and information. So far, little empirical research has been conducted on the size, distribution, timing, and characteristics of visitor populations. More specifically, the implications of the growing diversity in social groups and lifestyles on people's use of places have hitherto remained largely unexplored. Furthermore, since people increasingly change the spatial orientation of their activities throughout the day, more light needed to be shed on the role of travel behaviour characteristics such as travel time and origin-destination combinations and their relationship with the presence of visitor populations. Finally, the impact of spatial environment (urban, suburban, and rural) and urban system (monocentric and polycentric) on the characteristics of visitor populations and their daily use of places was lacking. This dissertation has taken the topic of visitor populations and presented an investigation of their characteristics, their space-time dynamics during an average weekday, and their impacts on the performance of places

Short-tem dynamics in the use of places: a space-time typology of visitor populations in the Netherlands

In a network society, spurred on by technological, social and economic factors, the process of land use deconcentration has resulted in various new urban forms such as edge cities and edgeless cities. While the consequences of this process for the distribution of the residential population and travel patterns have been extensively described and analysed, there has as yet been little investigation of the effect on visitors’ use of places. Using the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey, the paper develops a typology of urban, suburban and rural municipalities located in monocentric and polycentric urban systems on the basis of dimensions of diurnal weekday variations in visitor populations. A two-step cluster analysis results in five types of municipality: ‘central place’, ‘contemporary node’, ‘self-contained’, ‘mobile children’ and ‘local children’

Response, Willingness, and Data Donation in a Study on Accelerometer Possession in the General Population

In this study, we investigate prevalence of smartwatches; activity trackers (e.g., Fitbits); and apps to track personal activity on smartphones in the Dutch general population. In addition, we ask for respondents’ willingness to participate in a follow-up accelerometer study and wear a professional loaned activity tracker for a week. About half of the sample owns a personal device to track physical activity; 58.0% of those respondents are willing to copy personal data from the device into a questionnaire; 40.6% are willing to upload a spreadsheet from their personal device to a research portal. About half of the respondents of the entire sample express willingness to participate in a follow-up study and wear a professional accelerometer for a week. However, once invited, only 60.0% actually consent to participation. Respondents who own a personal device to monitor physical activity are more inclined to participate in the follow-up accelerometer study than respondents who do not own a personal device. This study shows that respondents with personal activity trackers show higher levels of physical activity compared to respondents without a personal device. In addition, participants in the follow-up study show higher levels of physical activity. Hence, estimating physical activity from personal activity trackers or professional activity trackers will likely result in biased results. We do not find significant differences between respondents with a personal device versus respondents without—nor people who participate in the accelerometer follow-up study—in sitting, standing, and lying time, however. Estimating sedentary behavior from personal or professional activity trackers is likely to result in unbiased results

Destination choice and the identity of places: a disaggregated analysis for different types of visitor population environment in the Netherlands

Individual behaviour relates to the ecological structure or identity of places. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the space–time ecologies of different types of visitor population environment in the Netherlands and destination choice. Multinomial logistic regression modelling for car users was applied to determine the relative importance of various personal and household attributes on choosing for a particular purpose a particular type of visitor population environment during a particular time period of the day. The attributes with the strongest link to the space–time ecologies of destination environments proved to be age, educational level, car ownership, and household income and type

Recruiting Young and Urban Groups into a Probability-Based Online Panel by Promoting Smartphone Use

A sizable minority of all web surveys are nowadays completed on smartphones. People who choose a smartphone for Internet-related tasks are different from people who mainly use a PC or tablet. Smartphone use is particularly high among the young and urban. We have to make web surveys attractive for smartphone completion in order not to lose these groups of smartphone users. In this paper we study how to encourage people to complete surveys on smartphones in order to attract hard-to-reach subgroups of the population. We experimentally test new features of a survey-friendly design: we test two versions of an invitation letter to a survey, a new questionnaire lay-out, and autoforwarding. The goal of the experiment is to evaluate whether the new survey design attracts more smartphone users, leads to a better survey experience on smartphones and results in more respondents signing up to become a member of a probability-based online panel. Our results show that the invitation letter that emphasizes the possibility for smartphone completion does not yield a higher response rate than the control condition, nor do we find differences in the socio-demographic background of respondents. We do find that slightly more respondents choose a smartphone for survey completion. The changes in the layout of the questionnaire do lead to a change in survey experience on the smartphone. Smartphone respondents need 20% less time to complete the survey when the questionnaire includes autoforwarding. However, we do not find that respondents evaluate the survey better, nor are they more likely to become a member of the panel when asked at the end of the survey. We conclude with a discussion of autoforwarding in web surveys and methods to attract smartphone users to web surveys

Recruiting young and urban groups into a probability-based online panel by promoting smartphone use

A sizable minority of all web surveys are nowadays completed on smartphones. People who choose a smartphone for Internet-related tasks are different from people who mainly use a PC or tablet. Smartphone use is particularly high among the young and urban. We have to make web surveys attractive for smartphone completion in order not to lose these groups of smartphone users. In this paper we study how to encourage people to complete surveys on smartphones in order to attract hard-to-reach subgroups of the population. We experimentally test new features of a survey-friendly design: we test two versions of an invitation letter to a survey, a new questionnaire lay-out, and autoforwarding. The goal of the experiment is to evaluate whether the new survey design attracts more smartphone users, leads to a better survey experience on smartphones and results in more respondents signing up to become a member of a probability-based online panel. Our results show that the invitation letter that emphasizes the possibility for smartphone completion does not yield a higher response rate than the control condition, nor do we find differences in the socio-demographic background of respondents. We do find that slightly more respondents choose a smartphone for survey completion. The changes in the layout of the questionnaire do lead to a change in survey experience on the smartphone. Smartphone respondents need 20% less time to complete the survey when the questionnaire includes autoforwarding. However, we do not find that respondents evaluate the survey better, nor are they more likely to become a member of the panel when asked at the end of the survey. We conclude with a discussion of autoforwarding in web surveys and methods to attract smartphone users to web surveys

Recruiting Young and Urban Groups into a Probability-Based Online Panel by Promoting Smartphone Use

A sizable minority of all web surveys are nowadays completed on smartphones. People who choose a smartphone for Internet-related tasks are different from people who mainly use a PC or tablet. Smartphone use is particularly high among the young and urban. We have to make web surveys attractive for smartphone completion in order not to lose these groups of smartphone users. In this paper we study how to encourage people to complete surveys on smartphones in order to attract hard-to-reach subgroups of the population. We experimentally test new features of a survey-friendly design: we test two versions of an invitation letter to a survey, a new questionnaire lay-out, and autoforwarding. The goal of the experiment is to evaluate whether the new survey design attracts more smartphone users, leads to a better survey experience on smartphones and results in more respondents signing up to become a member of a probability-based online panel. Our results show that the invitation letter that emphasizes the possibility for smartphone completion does not yield a higher response rate than the control condition, nor do we find differences in the socio-demographic background of respondents. We do find that slightly more respondents choose a smartphone for survey completion. The changes in the layout of the questionnaire do lead to a change in survey experience on the smartphone. Smartphone respondents need 20% less time to complete the survey when the questionnaire includes autoforwarding. However, we do not find that respondents evaluate the survey better, nor are they more likely to become a member of the panel when asked at the end of the survey. We conclude with a discussion of autoforwarding in web surveys and methods to attract smartphone users to web surveys