Siamak Hosseini - M.Sc. of Transportation Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University
Amir Reza Mamduhy - Professor of Transportation Eng., Tarbiat Modares University
Navid Hosseini Taleghani - PhD. Student of Transportation Eng., Parseh Transportation Research Ins.

Activity duration is one of the most important components of individual’s activity participation behavior and hence, one of the crucial determining factors of individual’s trip behavior. Predicting the activities and their durations, have gained a great attention by developing the activity-based models, in such a way that the success of an activity-based predicting model is strongly dependent on its behavioral models, whose purpose is predicting and reconstructing individual’s daily activities. Recent studies on the elderly behavior have brought into the light the fact that more than 30 percent of their out-of-home activities relates to shopping. Since the elderly population among shoppers is growing fast, this paper addresses the duration of shopping activity for the elderly and non-elderly, taking advantage of the duration model approach for recognizing its affecting factors. The case study of this shopping trip research is the information obtained from data mining in a sample of Qazvin citizens including, personal and family information, transportation network information and the characteristics of the suitable location for activity. The results indicate that regarding the goodness of fit measure, duration variable of shopping activity complies with log-logistic distribution and variables such as traveler’s information (sex, occupation and education), land use and also, trip characteristics (distance, trip mode, time-of-the-day) have significant effect on shopping activity duration.

Activity Duration, Activity-Based Model, Duration Model, the Elderly, Log-Logistic Distribution