How different are daily fluctuations and weekly rhythms in time-use behavior across urban settings? A case in two Japanese cities

Abstract For designing and evaluating the impacts of emerging mobility services, we need activity-based demand systems considering multi-week activity patterns and their variations. This study explored the inter- and intra-individual variations of time use in leisure activities during a non-working day. Specifically, the workday time-use impact on non-working-day time-use and their variations across two Japanese cities were examined in a metropolitan city (Yokohama) and a provincial city (Matsuyama). We used panel multiple discrete–continuous extreme value (MDCEV) models with five-week GPS-based data in the two cities. The results demonstrated the significant relationships between workday time-use and non-working day time-use (i.e., salient weekly rhythms) in Yokohama, but not in Matsuyama. For example, in Yokohama, (1) participants with long-time shopping on workday spent more time on recreation and less time on shopping on non-working day and (2) long-time workers on workday spent more time shopping on non-working days. Moreover, we clarified that workday time-use explained large portions of inter-individual variations in Yokohama while intra-individual variations were dominant in Matsuyama. It indicates that inhabitants in Yokohama were more affected by the time-use on workdays. In addition, activity time-use patterns in Matsuyama were more random than Yokohama since inhabitants in Matsuyama could take more flexible activity time-use patterns. Understanding such heterogeneous activity patterns will be crucial in developing and evaluating new mobility services in the future.