The determinants of shopping duration on workdays in the Netherlands

Abstract

While many studies of the duration of shopping episodes have considered the impact of sociodemographic variables, such as gender or income, few if any have considered spatial variation in the duration of shopping activities. This paper reports a study seeking to establish how the duration of shopping episodes varies with characteristics of the built environment in addition to other factors that are claimed to influence the duration of shopping episodes––temporal constraints, the monetary budget available and the activity/travel context of the shopping activity. The data used are derived from working male and female heads of household included in the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey. The results indicate that shopping duration on workdays is affected by temporal constraints, the activity/travel episodes conducted before or after the shopping activity, and the urban setting in which they are executed. Shopping episodes on workdays tend to take more time as the degree of urbanization of the urban setting is higher; the magnitude of this effect varies, however, with the time of day and gender