Communication and mobility behaviour – a trend and panel analysis of the correlation between mobile phone use and mobility

Abstract

The paper examines the assumption about the complementarity between telecommunications and transport on the level of individual persons. Taking into account that previous studies have shown the particularly strong correlation between mobile phone use and travel behaviour, telecommunications use is considered by focussing on the mobile phone. Using panel data from Germany for the years 2003 and 2007 the first step consisted in an investigation of changes in mobile phone use taking into consideration also the level from which potential changes started. About one half of the respondents had changed their mobile phone use, in most cases by an increase of use. In a second step a comparison was made to potential changes in travel behaviour of the observed persons. The results show that in those groups of persons where the mobile phone use was on a high level or even increased from a high level in 2003, travel behaviour in terms of travel frequency decreased less than for all other persons or even increased. The assumption that changes in “life circumstances” such as new place of residence or change of household size trigger the change in mobile phone use or travel behaviour could be generally confirmed.