The effect of monetary expenditures, socio-demographic factors and time-location variables on duration of leisure activities

The time constraint concept is a significant concept in time use and activity-travel studies given the aim of these studies to understand activity engagement, time allocation and time use patterns across a wide range of socio-economic, demographic, and geographic/location contexts. Monetary constraints are also important as they shape the time use for activities and travel. This is due to the fact that there is a relation between time use and monetary expenditures, especially for out-of-home leisure activities. In this paper, we are interested in the mutual relationship between time and money allocation recognizing that the value of out-of-home leisure activities can be best analyzed by considering the time spent and monetary expenditures simultaneously. Using regression analysis, the specific purpose of this paper is to estimate the effects of socio-demographics, time-location variables such as day of the week and location of activity on the duration of activity participating, taking into account the money that is spent on the out-of-home leisure activities. The specification of the regression analysis is derived from a utility-maximization model of activity participation under income and time-budget constraints. This paper reports estimation results based on a national continuous leisure time data set collected in 2008 in the Netherlands