Identifying and Analyzing Travel-Related Attitudinal, Personality, and Lifestyle Clusters in the San Francisco Bay Area

This report is part of an ongoing study of attitudes toward the act of traveling and the relationship of these attitudes to travel behavior and other characteristics. The primary purposes of this portion of the research are as follows: 1. From sets of interrelated variables, use factor analysis to identify the fundamental dimensions of Attitude, Personality, and Lifestyle characteristics relevant to this research; 2. Use cluster analysis to group respondents with similar profiles on those Attitude and Personality and Lifestyle characteristics; and 3. Analyze differences between clusters in terms of demographic traits, travel behavior, and other characteristics. The expectation is that clustering respondents with similar Attitudes and Personality and Lifestyle characteristics will offer insights into travel behavior that differ from those that can be gained from typical demographic characteristics. Understanding and accurately predicting travel behavior can help us develop appropriate and successful policies for the future. Unfortunately, predicting human behavior has consistently proven difficult. This thesis adds to the extensive research on travel attitudes and their connections to travel behavior, through the empirical measurement of new variables and new relationships. Specifically, travel attitudes and their connection to behavior have typically been studied with an emphasis on specific travel behaviors (i.e. the amount of travel, safety and risk behavior, or behavior aimed specifically at helping the environment). This research emphasizes attitudes toward travel itself, and explores how those attitudes are related to the individual’s general travel behavior and the desire to change that behavior.