Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of people's time use patterns, incorporating the mediating role of ICT and personal networks on their daily activity-travel patterns, explicitly addressing the issue of activity fragmentation for social-based episodes. Implementing a seven-day time use survey, which includes temporal, spatial, and social characteristics for each activity, and using a theoretical framework based on current theory, a structural equation model was estimated to study these relationships. The results suggest a positive effect of ICT episodes on social activity interaction, activity fragmentation, and out-of-home social allocated time. We also found that ICTs encourage social trip generation only indirectly. Finally, those who had a social network physically close showed higher levels of fragmentation in their social episodes and less out-of-home social activity time. These results add evidence to this research stream, enhancing, and further clarifying ICT's role in people's daily activity behavior.