Social Capital Theories of Activity and Mobility Behavior
Leisure Activity Variety & Instrumental Social CapitalWe propose a theory that leisure activity variety is an instrumental outcome and thus affected by instrumental social capital more than expressive social capital. The theory underlines two hypotheses that (1) social capital is an integral determinant of leisure activity participation, and (2) having access to greater instrumental support promotes greater leisure activity variety – an instrumental outcome. This theory was tested using a comprehensive list of different unique leisure activities collected from 1,275 survey respondents. To the authors’ knowledge, this refined and specially designed survey is the first in the transportation literature to use both a position generator and resource generator to measure social capital. Results from negative binomial regression models demonstrated that instrumental support had the largest influence on predicting activity variety outcome. The robustness of six instrumental support measures was assessed based on the variability of parameter estimates and model fit. Sensitivity testing affirmed the consideration that social capital is correlates with an individual’s activity participation. This study’s findings suggest that social capital can reduce estimation bias and unobserved heterogeneity across various socioeconomic attributes. As social capital has distinct impacts even among homogeneous demographic groups, transportation modelers can derive insights from social capital measures to build more socially and behaviorally realistic models. Temporal Variation in Activity Variety SeekingThe extraordinary disruption caused by the spread of COVID-19 has prompted the need to better understand the changes in people’s activity and mobility behavior. Reduced leisure activity space due to public health interventions has changed people’s ability to participate in different activities. This paper examines the temporal influence of social capital, mobility, personalities, and demographics on leisure variety using samples collected in 2019 and 2020. Social capital constructs, specifically instrumental support, have substantial and significant effects on increasing leisure activity variety and remain temporally stable. This result supports the robustness and importance of social capital in activity variety, which further provides evidence for the valuable resources offered by one’s social network -- even under drastic changes and restrictions. Age, household size, and extraversion are among the factors that exhibit temporal instability. Model inference shows negative impact of the pandemic on activity variety, especially for people aged 60 or older. Social Leisure Frequency & Expressive Social CapitalThis study examines the effects of social capital on the increased frequency of leisure activity participation. It is hypothesized that leisure activity frequency is an expressive outcome of social capital which is used by people to maintain and strengthen their social connections. This research proposes three research questions to test the two dimensions of social capital on the leisure activity participation frequency outcome:
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