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Insights into a spatially embedded social network from a large-scale snowball sample

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  • Focus Section on Frontiers in Network Science: Advances and Applications
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Abstract

Much research has been conducted to obtain insights into the basic laws governing human travel behaviour. While the traditional travel survey has been for a long time the main source of travel data, recent approaches to use GPS data, mobile phone data, or the circulation of bank notes as a proxy for human travel behaviour are promising. The present study proposes a further source of such proxy-data: the social network. We collect data using an innovative snowball sampling technique to obtain details on the structure of a leisure-contacts network. We analyse the network with respect to its topology, the individuals’ characteristics, and its spatial structure. We further show that a multiplication of the functions describing the spatial distribution of leisure contacts and the frequency of physical contacts results in a trip distribution that is consistent with data from the Swiss travel survey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Group of Transport Systems Planning and Transport Telematics, Berlin Institute of Technology, Salzufer 17-19, 10587, Berlin, Germany

    J. Illenberger & K. Nagel

  2. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Institute for Transport Planning and Systems ETH Hönggerberg, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland

    M. Kowald & K. W. Axhausen

Authors
  1. J. Illenberger
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  2. M. Kowald
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  3. K. W. Axhausen
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  4. K. Nagel
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Correspondence to J. Illenberger.

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Illenberger, J., Kowald, M., Axhausen, K.W. et al. Insights into a spatially embedded social network from a large-scale snowball sample. Eur. Phys. J. B 84, 549–561 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2011-10872-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2011-10872-0

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