Abstract

Purpose - In the context of the study of the role of social networks in travel behavior, this chapter adds to that body of knowledge by presenting a new data collection effort, which collects a wide array of information about the social, urban, and temporal context where social activity-travel behavior occurs. Methodology/approach - The study was developed in Concepcion, Chile, involving 240 respondents from four different urban contexts and their personal networks. The analysis concentrates on the challenges and opportunities of different techniques to build personal networks as a way of studying the social dimension of travel behavior. Although most of the current methods to study personal networks rely on emotional closeness, this approach may not be sufficient, since these "elicited'' people may not include daily contacts that could be relevant to study social activities. Tackling this issue, the data instrument also collects those daily "revealed'' people, on a two-day time use diary and a social activities listing. With this information, the chapter presents a comparative analysis between these "elicited'' and "revealed'' personal networks. Findings - Overall, the results illustrate the dependence of the name generator technique on what is observed in terms of social activity-travel behavior, specifically on aspects such as personal network size, average distance, and frequencies of interaction. In addition, the comparison between the different methods to construct the personal networks, illustrates how name generators provide the opportunity to further understand transport related questions, such as the role of income and access to amenities on spatial and temporal patterns of social interactions, and their effect on social capital.