Toward Conceptualizing Trip-Chaining Behavior: A Review

This paper critically reviews the existing literature on multiple-trip journeys, and clarifies the need for an improved conceptualization and modeling strategy. It also suggests different ways that trip chaining can be treated and a theory constructed. Exploratory studies, from the 1960s and 1970s, are briefly surveyed (Section I). While they developed the existence and complexity of travel patterns, they lacked any comprehensive theoretical framework. However, they were useful in that they supported the conceptual framework of various kinds of stochastic processes used by transportation scientists to replicate trip-chaining behavior (Section II). Scientists subsequently improved their conceptualization of the issue by grounding individual behavior on the principle of utility maximization. In this latter area the economists have emphasized theoretical concerns while transportation researchers have emphasized operationality (Section III).