Mokhtarian, Patricia

Van Acker, Veronique

Witlox, Frank

English

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

  biblio.ugent.be  The UGent Institutional Repository is the electronic archiving and dissemination platform for all UGent research publications. Ghent University has implemented a mandate stipulating that all academic publications of UGent researchers should be deposited and archived in this repository. Except for items where current copyright restrictions apply, these papers are available in Open Access.  This item is the archived peer-reviewed author-version of: Defining the lifestyle concept. An application to travel behavior research. Van Acker, V., Mokhtarian, P.L., Witlox, F. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Travel Behavior Research, 13/12/2009-18/12/2009, Jaipur.    To refer to or to cite this work, please use the citation to the published version: Van Acker, V., Mokhtarian, P.L., Witlox, F. Defining the lifestyle concept. An application to travel behavior research. 14th International Conference on Travel Behavior Research 13/12/2009-18/12/2009, Jaipur.     1 Defining the lifestyle concept An application to travel behavior research  Veronique Van Ackera 1, Patricia L. Mokhtarianb, Frank Witloxa  a Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 / S8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium b Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis CA 95616, USA  1 corresponding author. Tel.: +32 9 264 46 97; fax.: +32 9 264 49 85. E-mail addresses: veronique.vanacker@ugent.be (V. Van Acker), plmokhtarian@ucdavis.edu (P.L. Mokhtarian), frank.witlox@ugent.be (F. Witlox)  Travel is generally considered as a derived demand: although sometimes people might travel just ‘for fun’ (e.g., Mokhtarian, 2001; Mokhtarian and Salomon, 2001), people mainly travel in order to access desired activities in other locations. After all, activities such as living, working, shopping and recreating are in most cases spatially separated. Therefore, it seems commonsensical that the travel behavior of individuals and households will alter by changing the location of these activities and the design characteristics of these locations. This suggests a relationship between the built environment and travel behavior. Many studies try to model and measure this relationship (for a review, see, e.g. Badoe and Miller, 2000; Crane, 2000; Ewing and Cervero, 2001 for the U.S.A; Stead and Marshall, 2001; van Wee, 2002 for Europe).   However, different travel patterns can still be found within similar neighborhoods or within similar socio-economic homogenous population groups. This is (partly) due to personal lifestyles. The impact of lifestyle has certainly increased. During the last decennia, prosperity increased, resulting in more available possibilities to choose from. Moreover, the social burden to behave uniformly disappeared because of increasing individualization and decreasing social control. These processes allow people to lead a personal lifestyle (Ferge, 1972; Bootsma et al., 1993). Consequently, taking lifestyles into account in addition to the traditionally used variables may provide interesting insights into the connection between the built environment and travel behavior.   Despite its frequent colloquial use, a distinct lifestyle theory is hard to find. Lifestyle is elaborated pragmatically, rather than theoretically. Especially marketing studies (e.g., Mitchell, 1983) use the concept of lifestyle in order to retrieve market sectors. These studies generally analyze numerous data by explorative statistics, such as cluster analysis. Each cluster is then referred to as another lifestyle. Because a sound theoretical basis is lacking and results are data-dependent, each study “finds” new lifestyles. This pragmatic approach is criticized by Sobel (1983) among others. Nevertheless, some theoretical contributions to the lifestyle concept are made by Weber (1972), Bourdieu (1984) and Ganzeboom (1988). They agree on the communicative character of lifestyles: the individual elucidate his or her social position through specific patterns of behavior. However, lifestyles include more than observable patterns of behavior. According to Ganzeboom (1988), lifestyles also refer to opinions and motivations, including beliefs, interests and attitudes. This may confound our understanding of the lifestyle concept. For that reason, Munters (1992) distinguished lifestyles from lifestyle expressions. He considered lifestyles as the individual’s opinions and motivations, or orientations. Mainly work orientation, leisure orientation and household/family orientation definite lifestyles (Salomon and Ben-Akiva, 1983; Bootsma et   2 al., 1993). Consequently, lifestyles are internal to the individual and, thus, are unobservable. A lifestyle, then, manifests itself in observable patterns of behavior, or lifestyle expressions. In this way, observable patterns of behavior (= lifestyle expressions) are explained by underlying opinions and orientations (= lifestyles).   From the above, it should be clear how to measure lifestyles. Briefly summarized, lifestyle refers to the individual’s opinions and orientations toward general themes such as family orientation, work orientation and leisure orientation. Some empirical studies (e.g., Salomon and Ben-Akiva, 1983; Cooper et al., 2001; Hildebrand, 2003) analyze what they would call lifestyles, but in fact they combine various objective socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the individual and the household. Consequently, these studies refer to stage of life cycle or household composition rather than to lifestyles. Although a lifestyle is partly influenced by stage of life cycle or household composition, lifestyle has a different meaning. Socio-economic and demographic variables must, therefore, be separated from lifestyles.  Current travel behavior surveys can be used to analyze travel behavior as the derivate of activity behavior, but these surveys generally lack information on lifestyles. Therefore, we conducted an additional Internet survey during May 2007-October 2007. According to the preceding theoretical explanation of lifestyles, the Internet survey included questions on leisure (holidays, sports, culture, literature and weekend activities) and the assessment of the work-family balance. A second-order factor analysis revealed 6 lifestyles: (i) social networkers, (ii) culture-lovers, (iii) low budget, but adventurous, (iv) low budget, not adventurous, (v) family ties, and (vi) high budget and adventurous. Then, a structural equation model explains the supplementary explanatory power of lifestyles in travel analyses.   References  Badoe, D.A., Miller, E.J. (2000). “Transportation – land-use interaction: empirical findings in North America, and their implications for modelling”, Transportation Research D, 5: 235-263.   Bootsma, H., Camstra, R., de Feijter, H., Mol, A. (1993). “Leefstijl: een dynamische levensorientatie (Lifestyle: A dynamic life orientation)”, Rooilijn, 26: 332-337. [in Dutch]  Bourdieu, P. (1984). La Distinction. (London: Routledge).  Cooper, J., Ryley, T., Smith, A. (2001). “Contemporary lifestyles and the implications for sustainable development policy: lessons from the UK’s most car dependent city; Belfast”, Cities, 18: 103-113.  Crane, R. (2000). “The influence of urban form on travel: an interpretive review”, Journal of Planning Literature, 15 (1): 3-23.  Ewing, R., Cervero, R. (2001). “Travel and the built environment: a synthesis”, Transportation Research Record, 1780: 87-114.  Ganzeboom, H. (1988). Leefstijlen in Nederland: Een Verkennende Studie (Lifestyles in the Netherlands: An explorative study). (Rijswijk: Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau). [in Dutch]    3 Ferge, S. (1972). “Social differentiation in leisure activity choices”, in: Szalai, A. (Ed.) The Use of Time: Daily Activities of Urban and Suburban Population in Twelve Countries, 213-227 (Den Haag: Mouton).   Hildebrand, E.D. (2003). “Dimensions in elderly travel behaviour: A simplified activity-based model using lifestyle clusters”, Transportation, 30: 285-306.  Mitchell, A. (1983). The Nine American Lifestyles. (New York: Warner).  Mokhtarian, P.L. (2001). “Understanding the demand for travel: It’s not purely derived”, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 14 (1): 355-380.  Mokhtarian, P.L., Salomon, I. (2001). “How derived is the demand for travel ? Some conceptual and measurement considerations”, Transportation Research A, 35 (8): 695-719.  Munters, Q.J. (1992). “Bestaan leefstijlen (nog) wel ? (Do lifestyles (still) exist ?)”, Sociologische Gid,  39: 179-185. [in Dutch]  Salomon, I., Ben-Akiva, M. (1983). “The use of the life-style concept in travel demand models”, Environment and Planning, A, 15: 623-638.  Sobel, M.E. (1983). Lifestyle and social structure; concepts, definitions, analysis. (New York: Academic Press).  Stead, D., Marshall, S. (2001). “The relationships between urban form and travel patterns. An international review and evaluation”, European Journal on Transport Infrastructure and Research, 1 (2): 113-141.  van Wee, B. (2002). “Land use and transport: Research and policy challenges”, Journal of Transport Geography, 10: 259-271.  Weber, M. (1972). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Mohr, Tübingen.         

Defining the lifestyle concept: an application to travel behavior research

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Defining the lifestyle concept: an application to travel behavior research

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