EPJ Data Sci. (2017) 6: 11
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-017-0108-6

Regular article

Inferring social influence in transport mode choice using mobile phone data

¹ Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
² Department of Civil Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
³ Sociology and Economics of Networks and Services Department, Orange Labs, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
⁴ Center for Informatics and Systems, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

^* e-mail: santi@eng.cmu.ac.th

Received: 15 June 2016
Accepted: 7 June 2017
Published online: 14 June 2017

Abstract

A longitudinal mobile phone data that include both location and communication logs is analyzed to infer social influence in terms of ego-network effect in the commute mode choice. The results show that person’s strong ties are more important to determine if driving is the person’s transport mode choice, whereas weak ties are more important to determine if public transit is the person’s choice. It is also evident from the results that social ties that are geographically closer are more influential for the commute mode choice than the ones who are farther away. For public transit, access distance is also one of the influential factors. The portion of transit users decreases as the access distance becomes larger. Moreover, social network is shown to influence the commute mode choice, as the likelihood of choosing a particular mode choice rises with the portion of social ties choosing that specific mode.