Multi-worker household commuting and residential location choice

The central purpose of this research is to investigate multi-worker households' commuting and residential location choice behavior. These choices have a significant bearing on housing development, land use and transportation planning. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 60 percent of married-couple families have both spouses working. Yet little is known about how multi-worker households trade off different travel demands, jointly decide where to live, where to work, and how much each of them commute.; This paper probes some fundamental questions on the nature of travel and location decisions made within dual-earner families by utilizing insights from bargaining theory. Several hypotheses drawn from theory and various literatures that address commuting and location choices were tested using disaggregate 1995 Nationwide Personal Travel Survey (NPTS) data.; The study demonstrated that economic bargaining theory can serve as a useful theoretical framework especially for studies on commuting behavior of dual-earner households and the trade-offs they face in location choices concerning commuting and other competing demands. It helps us to address and understand fundamental questions of the behavioral process such as how decisions are made in families through bargaining, compromise and cooperation among family members when faced with competing wants of both work and home responsibilities, as well as the desires for neighborhood amenities and access to quality schools and services.