Quantitative and qualitative gendered time-use in travel-based multitasking

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joachim Scheiner
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2017 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 366195702

The proposal is an extension of the project ‘Commuting and activity patterns in a gender context’. It uses German Time Use Survey data to unravel the complex bundles of time-use patterns of men and women during travel, with a focus on travel-based multitasking, i.e. the secondary activities carried out during travel (work, care, discretionary). Specifically, the project has three empirical work packages that focus on the following topics.First, to analyse how multitasking varies during travel between different population groups and compare travelling multitaskers with travellers who do not multitask during trips. Here, the aim is to compare the time spent in pure travel (without multitasking) and contaminated travel (by multitasking with secondary activities) and unravel associations of travel-based multitasking with joint travel (‘with whom’ – alone, with child(ren), with partner, with others) and travel purposes.Second, to explore the association of travel-based multitasking with covariates such as household and personal sociodemographics, job characteristics, presence of partner/child during travel, trip characteristics (peak/off-peak travel time, mode use, travel time, commute distance), spatial attributes (urbanity, region), time use in paid, unpaid and leisure activities (in-home), and preferences in time use. Third, to explore the association between subjective measures (as the outcome variable) such as time pressure or time-use satisfaction and commute time in the context of job-related multitasking. Two models: job-related travel with multitasking and job-related travel without multitasking will be compared to examine how the effects on subjective feelings of time use vary. Other explanatory variables include household and personal sociodemographics, spatial attributes (urbanity, region), travelling alone or with others, and interpersonal interaction (partner effects).Methods used include descriptive statistics and linear/ binomial/ multinomial/ fractional regression analysis. The research will provide a basis for future research and policy recommendations with respect to its implications for travel well-being and time use towards job-family integration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants