Abstract
Differences in how men and women travel have long been a focus in transportation research. Many studies have explored how socially-defined gender roles influence travel decisions and behaviors, consistently highlighting disparities between men’s and women’s travel patterns. For example, compared to men, women tend to make more caregiving and household-related trips, have shorter commutes, and are more likely to combine multiple destinations or purposes into a single tour. This body of research often concentrates on standard measures of travel—such as the number of trips taken, how far and for how long people travel, and travelers’ experiences— while also considering the influence of neighborhood design. However, travel patterns also are shaped by broader social structures and inequalities, which are not captured by these traditional measures. To better understand sex differences in travel, this study examined disparities in the size of an individual’s “activity spaces,” defined as the geographic area a person covers during daily activities, such as commuting, shopping, socializing, and leisure. The study draws on detailed trip data from the confidential California add-on to the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), which provides the exact starting and ending locations for each trip taken on the survey day. The study estimates the size of each person’s activity space and compare patterns between men and women. It then explore how these differences relate to individual, household, and neighborhood characteristics.
