An Agent-Based Home Exchange Model to Reduce Commute Times of University Students

Introduction

People spend a considerable amount of their time commuting to and from work or school. In order to contribute to reducing commute times in cities, this study proposes a mutual home exchange model for tenants. The proposed model searches for matches that can reduce commute times for both sides in the case that tenants exchange their homes. University students are chosen in this study, because university students are a subset of tenants and an ideal group for home exchange matching study rather than families since there may be less custom preferences for them to choose a location to rent a flat or a house.

In recent years, due to the increasing traffic congestion, there has been a growing amount of studies focusing on urban mobility patterns (Sun and Axhausen 2016), mobility decisions within couples (Picard et al. 2018), traffic congestion (Song et al. 2019; Acemoglu et al. 2018), activity and travel behavior (Miller 2019; Hickman and Banister 2017; Feng and Timmermans 2016; Arentze and Timmermans 2004), quality of life and its relation to sustainable transportation (Steg and Gifford 2005). Recent advances in the field of technology have led to the emergence of studies on developing smart mobility systems and the impact of these systems on travel behavior: Environmental impacts of car-sharing systems (Nijland and van Meerkerk 2017), shared mobility systems such as ride-sharing (Mak et al. 2018; Willing et al. 2017; Furuhata et al. 2013) and bike-sharing (Fishman et al. 2014; Schuijbroek et al. 2017). To the best of our knowledge, no extensive study or any agent-based analysis has been performed to develop a home exchange model in order to improve the quality of life of individuals and optimize the matching decisions of households. Moreover, several studies showed that long commute times have negative impacts on daily life and any dis-benefits of commuting will potentially affect a large proportion of the population. It is found that longer commute times are associated with negative impacts on the sub-domains of subjective well-being, which are lower job and leisure time satisfaction. Longer commute times are associated with increased strain and lower mental health as well (Clark et al. 2019). Longer commute times introduce greater stress into daily life and commuting to work may be a stressful experience (Koslowsky et al. 1995). There are several studies showed that there is a negative relationship between commute time and life satisfaction (Olsson et al. 2013; Choi et al. 2013; Nie and Sousa-Poza 2018). A number of studies have found there is an association between longer commute times and reduced satisfaction with leisure time (Clark et al. 2019; Dickerson et al. 2014; Stutzer and Frey 2008; Lorenz 2018). It was also analyzed how people rated their mood during various daily activities and commuting received the minimum scores on positive affect (Kahneman et al. 2004). Some studies have examined the relationship between longer commute times and reduced happiness (Olsson et al. 2013; Choi et al. 2013; Nie and Sousa-Poza 2018) In this study, it is aimed at reducing commuting times; hence short commute times may contribute job and leisure time satisfaction as well as reducing traffic congestion in large populated cities.