The social dimension in action: A multilevel, personal networks model of social activity frequency between individuals

This paper presents a social activity-travel generation model, which explicitly incorporates the individual’s social dimension through the concept of personal networks, modeling the multilevel structure of social relations defined by these networks. The objective of the analysis is to study the relevance of the social dimension as a source of explanation of social activity-travel generation behavior between an individual and each relevant person of their social life. The paper uses a disaggregated perspective of personal networks, explicitly incorporating the characteristics of each network member as well as the characteristics of the overall social structure. Using an ordinal multilevel specification that accounts for the social network in which individuals are embedded, four dimensions are studied: personal characteristics, “with whom” activities are performed, social network composition and structure, and ICT (information and communication technology) interaction. The results show that a proper and complete understanding of social activity generation requires going beyond the individualistic paradigm, explicitly incorporating the role of the social dimension in the study of this decision-making process.