Focusing on connected personal leisure networks: selected results from a snowball sample

<b>Abstract.</b> Explanations of leisure travel must take the influence of participants’ social contacts into account. To analyze this influence, transport planning uses social network analysis methods. While most past projects have focused on isolated network components, this paper presents a study collecting data on connected personal networks by taking a snowball sample. The paper explains difficulties for transport planning in approaching and explaining leisure travel and then introduces both the survey methodology and the instrument in detail. Advantages and disadvantages of snowball sampling are addressed, and the question why this strategy is important for approaching leisure travel, followed by experiences from the field about response rate, the fit between survey and target population, and sources of bias are given. Descriptive analyses highlight the potential of the data to produce new empirical insights. <br><b>Keywords:</b> connected personal networks, snowball sample, survey methodology