Trip Chaining Behavior in Developing Countries: A Study of Mumbai Metropolitan Region, India

Trip making behavior of people is becoming complex day by day due to their modern and hectic life style. This exhibits that a better understanding of trip chain decision making is necessary to transportation researchers and policy makers. Hence, this paper explores trip chaining behavior of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) residents using the activity-travel survey conducted by the authors in 2011. This paper proposes a typology of trip chains based on the structure of trips and activity purpose. Further, this study develops an empirical framework to examine the effect of household and individual socioeconomic characteristics, and travel choices on individual trip chain making behavior. In addition to the descriptive analysis, a nested logit model is proposed for further understanding of the concept. Model estimation results shows that, the identified variables have significant explanatory power in the decisions relating to the trip chain choice. This study provides promising insights on trip chaining behavior of the people in developing countries and it also extends the need to incorporate trip chaining behavior in existing travel demand forecasting models.