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The Impact of Residential Self-Selection on Travel Mode Choice, Focusing on Lifestyle and Travel Satisfaction: A Case Study of Tehran

Razi Ardakani, Hesamoddin | 2025

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  1. Type of Document: Ph.D. Dissertation
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 58760 (09)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Civil Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Kermanshah, Mohammad; Kermanshah, Amir Hassan
  7. Abstract:
  8. In the literature on transportation demand analysis, there is an ongoing debate among researchers regarding the causality of the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior. The central issue in this context is residential self-selection, which refers to individuals' tendency to choose their residential location based on their travel abilities, needs, and preferences. Ignoring this phenomenon leads to an overestimation of the true impact of built environment characteristics on travel behavior, resulting in inefficient policy-making based on such estimates. The objective of this research is to examine the effect of residential self-selection on travel mode choice, emphasizing the role of subjective variables and travel satisfaction in Tehran as a developing metropolis. Data were collected via face-to-face interviews using questionnaires at the respondents' workplaces. Using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), main factors including lifestyle, personality, travel attitude, residential attitude, and travel satisfaction were extracted. Through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), three separate models were estimated to investigate the relationship between subjective variables, residential location characteristics, and the choice of private car, public transport, and walking. The conceptual structure of each model comprises exogenous variables, a mediator variable (built environment characteristics), and a dependent variable (weekly trip frequency), allowing for the separation of direct and indirect effects. Furthermore, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was employed to quantify the contribution of self-selection. The results indicate that among various factors, the "organized" personality trait, car-oriented attitude, and satisfaction with the private car experience have the highest impact on the tendency to reside in non-central areas. Conversely, the "family-oriented" factor, walking safety attitude, and "low-risk" personality trait increase the propensity to reside in central areas. The indirect effect of attitudes on travel mode choice through residential location characteristics is statistically significant. The model's explanatory power was highest for the private car and lowest for walking. The contribution of self-selection is highest for public transport, moderate for the private car, and lowest for walking These findings have important implications for urban transportation policy. The significant difference in the contribution of self-selection across different modes suggests that uniform policies to change travel behavior will yield varying effectiveness; promoting public transport usage requires attitudinal and cultural interventions more than walking does, whereas improving physical environmental infrastructure will be more effective for increasing walking
  9. Keywords:
  10. Structural Equations Modeling ; Travel Behavior ; Travel Attitudes ; Lifestyle ; Propensity Score Matching ; Travel Satisfaction ; Residential Self-Selection

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