The topic of my thesis is "the links among the built environment, travel attitudes, and travel behavior: a household-based perspective". In this research, I aim to explore the decision mechanism of the household couples in location and travel choices. Based on the household travel survey data in Beijing, 2016, and a series of multivariate analyses, I find that the couples do play different roles in household decisions. Specifically, the husband's travel attitudes matter more in long-term choices like the residential location and car ownership, while the wife's dominant shortterm decisions such as daily travel in urban China. In addition, the husband tends to adjust his travel behavior in accord to the wife's travel pattern, but not the other way around.

Besides providing a new (household) perspective to future academic research on the built environment and travel behavior, this thesis also has important policy implications for future urban and transport planning. In particular, urban planners should better take the household rather than the individual as the audience of land use and transport-related policies. Travel is a way to meet personal needs in daily life, and thus improved wellbeing should be the ultimate policy goal in transport. In future works, I will extend the current research framework by including social equity and travelers' subjective wellbeing into analysis.

Professional Profile: https://www.uu.nl/staff/XGuan