Assessing the impacts of office relocations on travel behavior and organization of activities within households

The aim of this paper is to study the effects of office relocation on travel behavior and household
organization of employees and their household members. In general, office relocation can have
various short and long term impacts and may influence decisions relating to mode choice and task
sharing within the household. Most of these impacts usually happen over time during an adaptation
process. Against this background a new methodological approach was designed to capture these
impacts of the relocation. This approach proposes two survey waves to analyze the entire
adaptation process, whereby the first wave also contains a retrospective section to capture travel
behavior and household organization before the relocation. Thus altogether three successive time
periods can be recorded by means of only two survey waves.
A case study from Karlsruhe, Germany using this approach shows a significant change in
travel behavior when an institution is relocated from a suburban site to the inner city. The
relocation results in a modal shift in travel behavior from the car to bicycle and public
transportation caused by poor parking facilities and shorter commuting trips in average. ... mehrThe
findings illustrate significant adaptations within two years after the move. Employees change their
mode of choice on the commuting trips and are able to further support the household members,
e.g. by making smaller purchases during their commuting trips. Based on the results it is
recommendable to analyze relocations not only in terms of employees’ behavior but considering
impacts on household organization and household member during the entire adaptation process as
well.