The Interaction between E-Shopping and Shopping Trips: An Analysis with 2017 NHTS

Xue, Chenlei Wu Qunqi Sun Maopeng Bai Pengxia Chen Yang

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) have dramatically changed the nature of shopping and the way people travel. As this technology becomes deeply rooted in people’s lives, understanding the interplay between this way and personal travel is becoming increasingly important for planners. Using travel diary data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data for structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, it revealed the interaction between e-shopping and shopping trips and the factors that affect this bidirectional relationship. Results show that e-shopping motivates shopping trips, and in-store shopping inhibits online shopping. It can be obtained that the increase of one standard deviation of e-shopping will increase the shopping trip by 0.17 standard deviation. When shopping trips increase by one standard deviation, e-shopping behavior also decreases by 0.12 standard deviation. The results also demonstrated that e-shopping and shopping travel behavior is heterogeneous across a variety of exogenous factors such as personal attributes, household characteristics, geography, travel distance/duration, and travel mode. Identifying the interaction may help formulate better transportation policies and lay the foundation for travel demand management strategies to reduce the stress on the transportation system and meet individual travel needs.