Space-Time Behavior Research and Application in China - Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience - page 29

Fig. 3.5 Space-time path of residents in inner-city and suburban area (Made by APA) ( a ) Danwei
compounds ( b ) Commercial Housing Community (Source: Zhao and Chai 2013 )
(i.e., danwei vs. market), job accessibility, and travel behavior, which demonstrates
the danwei 's significant effects as a source of housing on commuting, travel modes,
trip rates, time spent on out-of-home activities, and other space-time patterns.
Another important theme is the impacts of suburbanization on individual space-
time behavior. Zhao and Chai ( 2013 ) have found that compared to inner-city
residents, those living in suburban neighborhoods have extensive space-time paths
in their daily activities and longer work-activity segments along the space-time paths
(see Fig. 3.5 ). The space-time structure of work-related activities also imposes major
time-budget constraints on non-work activities and particularly leisure activities,
resulting in fewer out-of-home, non-work activities during the day. By contrast,
residents in Danwei compounds had shorter work segments on space-time paths
and they tended to perform more non-work activities near the home locations, which
reflected less restrictive time-budget constraint experienced by these residents.
In addition to descriptive studies of space-time activity patterns, the space-
time behavior approach was adopted to investigate how individuals made decisions
within the constraints of urban built environment. Other research paid more attention
on impacts of urban form on non-work activities such as shopping behavior. For
instance, Zhang and Chai ( 2009a ) constructed a three-level nested logit model to
investigate the influence of residential location on shopping frequency, shopping
task allocation, and tour patterns. Furthermore, some other research adopted a
tour-based modeling framework to examine the impact of built environment on
individual's spatial-temporal decision-making (Chai et al. 2010b ; Zhao and Chai
2010 ).
Built on the accumulation of empirical literature, Chai and colleagues proposed a
conceptual framework for the urban space study based on the individual space-time
behavior (Chai and Shen 2006 ;seeFig. 3.6 ). The framework aims at integrating a
series of dichotomous concepts in space-time behavior research, such as space/time,
choice/constraint, and aggregate/disaggregate, to better account for the relationship
between the activity-travel system and the urban space become the core of this
framework (Chai 2005 ; Zhang and Chai 2009b ; Chai and Shen 2006 , 2008 ). First,
individual activity-travel behavior would be understood by exploring both revealed
preferences and stated preferences within the urban spaces. Second, the framework