The influence of parents’ travel patterns, perceptions and residential self-selectivity to their children travel mode shares

Using the UK National Travel Survey from 2002 to 2006, this paper investigates the influence of households’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions on accessibilities and their travel patterns on their children daily travel mode share. In doing this, this study introduces a model structure that represents the complex interactions between the parents’ travel patterns, their perceptions on public transport services and their reported residential self-selectivity reasons and the children travel mode shares. This structure is analysed with structural equation modelling. The model estimation results show that parents’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on accessibilities and their daily travel patterns significantly influence the children’s daily travel mode shares. However, the effects are not uniform across household members. This study has revealed that households’ residential self-selectivity behaviours have more correlations with the children’s non-motorised mode shares, whilst the parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on transport infrastructure and public transport service qualities have more correlations with parents’ mode shares. The results also confirm that parents’ non-motorised modes use in travelling is highly correlated with the children’s physically active travel mode shares. However, at the same time, the results also show that the effects of mothers’ car use to the children travel mode shares is more apparent than fathers’.