Collecting Social Network Data to Study Social Activity Travel: An Egocentric Approach

Develops a data collection instrument that explicitly links social networks to travel behavior through an egocentric approach, testing the hypothesis that individuals' travel is conditional on their social network structure. Demonstrates how survey and interview methods can be designed to capture the social dimension that transportation research had largely ignored.

Demonstrates that travel behavior, seemingly a matter of individual choice and geography, is fundamentally structured by social networks. By making networks visible in transportation data, the study reveals a relational dimension of spatial behavior that individualistic models systematically miss, showing how the lens of analysis determines what can be known.