Integrated Model of Joint Residence-Workplace Location Choice and Commute Behavior Using Latent Class and Mixed Logit Methods

With the rapid development of urbanization and motorization, urban commute trips are becoming increasingly serious due to the unbalanced distribution of residence and workplace land-use types in most Chinese cities. To explore the inherent interrelations among residence location, workplace, and commute trip, an integrated model framework of joint residence-workplace location choice and commute behavior is put forward based on the personal trip survey data of Beijing in 2005. First, to extract households’ different choice characteristics, this paper presents a latent class model, clusters all households into several groups, and analyzes the conditional probability of each group. Second, the paper integrates the residence location and workplace together as the joint choice alternative, employs the socioeconomic factors, individual attributes, household attributes, and trip characteristics as explanatory variables, and formulates the joint residence-workplace location choice model using mixed logit method. Estimations of the latent class model show that four latent groups fit the data best. Further results of the joint residence-workplace location choice model indicate that there exist significantly different choice characteristics in each latent group. Generally, the integrated model framework outperforms traditional location choice methods.