Chapter 4: The Influence of Parent’s Perceptions and Residential Self-Selection to the Children’s Travel Modes at Single Parent Households

This chapter investigates the impacts of households’ residential self-selection, parents’ perceptions and travel patterns on their children’s daily travel mode shares, among single parent households.

To capture the complexity of the relationships between parent and children daily travel mode choices, an integrated model structure is introduced and the model estimated with simultaneous equation modelling.

The results show that, beside the daily activity-travel engagements of the parent, both parent’s perceptions and his/her residential self-selection reasons play significant roles in influencing their children daily travel mode shares. The parent’s perceptions play more significant roles in influencing children’s travel modes shares, whilst the residential self-selection reasons have more significant influence on the parent’s travel mode choice.

The finding of this study reveals a fact that wherever the children live, their travel behaviour tend to be ‘neutral’ and open to influence by their parents throughout their childhood.

This study adds to our understanding of the interactions between parents’ attitudes and behaviours with their children’s travel patterns. This study focuses on single parent households, on which there is very little literature.