A Conceptual Exploration and Some Survey Findings
12 DEC 2013 (THU) | 19:00-20:00
Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong.
Speakers:
Professor Patricia Mokhtarian Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Professor Patricia Mokhtarian is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to August 2013, she held the same title at the University of California, Davis, as well as being Associate Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and founding Chair of the interdisciplinary MS/PhD program in Transportation Technology and Policy there. She joined UC Davis in 1990, after nine years in regional planning and consulting in Southern California. Prof. Mokhtarian has specialized in the study of travel behavior for more than 30 years. Key research interests include the impacts of land use on travel behavior (particularly including residential location and residential self-selection issues), the impact of telecommunications technology on travel behavior, commuters' responses to congestion and to system disruptions, attitudes toward mobility, and travel multitasking. She has authored or co-authored more than 200 refereed journal articles, technical reports, and other publications; her Google Scholar profile can be viewed at http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=84jTPKEAAAAJ. She is a North American editor of the journal Transportation, and serves on the editorial boards of five other journals.
Abstract:
Whether embraced or tolerated, multitasking is a hallmark of modern life. This talk introduces a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of nearly any type of multitasking behavior, and the corresponding degree of preference for doing multiple activities simultaneously ("polychronicity"). Professor Mokhtarian will show how four archetypes of mono/multitasking behavior emerge from consideration of the two dimensions "share of time" and "share of resources" allocated to each task, and will discuss other elements of a typology of multitasking behavior. Turning to activities conducted while traveling (or, "travel-based multitasking") as one region within the entire "multitasking landscape", she will present the motivation for increasing our understanding of such behavior. Professor Mokhtarian will also introduce the survey data collected by her research team to study these issues, and present some key descriptive results from the survey.
Organizers:
Institute of Transport Studies, HKU (ITS)