The Effects of Multitasking and Tools Carried by Travelers Onboard on the Perceived Trip Time

Travelers conduct onboard activities while using the tools they bring with them onboard to convert part of their travel time to a productive time. Productive travel time contributes to the reduction in the disutility of travel time. This paper discusses the influence of travelers’ onboard activities and the tools carried by travelers on the perceived trip time. 10 onboard activities and 12 tools carried by travelers are introduced and studied in this work. A questionnaire focusing on the main trip of each respondent in urban areas is conducted, where a sample size of 525 participants is collected. Statistical methods such as central tendency, chi-square, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), rank-based nonparametric test, and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) are applied. The main findings are the following: almost all of the onboard activities and the tools carried by travelers impact the trip time positively (i.e., the perception is enhanced). For each transport mode, the most frequent onboard activities that impact the trip time positively is obtained, and the connection between each onboard activity and each tool carried by travelers is found (i.e., moderate to strong association). EFA uncovers the underlying relationship between those onboard activities and those tools carried by travelers that influence travelers’ perception. In this case, instead of the full list, fewer onboard activities and tools carried by travelers are produced to simplify the finding of their impacts on the perceived trip time. The participation in onboard activity is ranked across certain groups, such as the tendency of women to be engaged in onboard activities is higher than men’s tendency. Regarding the positive impact on trip time, a statistical difference is demonstrated between groups, where the use of the tools carried by travelers is varied across the transport mode, trip purpose, and trip time, gender, age, education, and job variable. Besides, the involvement in onboard activities is statistically dependent across the transport mode, gender, income, and car ownership variable. The output of this study helps decision-makers and mobility planners in understanding the behavior of travelers onboard in more detail, such as the availability of onboard tools affecting the choice of transport mode.