Investigation of human behavior in a virtual environment

Modeling traffic patterns has remained a difficult problem recently made even more complex by transportation modelers’ attempts to incorporate aspects of human decision making in traffic demand forecast methodology. In this paper, we propose to study the traffic pattern as the emerging result of the interplay between the urban/physical environment, the institutional context, the transportation system, and individuals’ and households’ need to make travel decision in order to meet particular life goals. The paper presents the aspects of building a virtual environment for the study and measurement of human behavior in the context of activity scheduling. The proposed system will allow for the tweaking of situational constraints to induce reactions and the examination of behavioral outcomes. We postulate that this method will yield more reliable information about human behavior and decision making than conventionally used-methods.