The analysis applies established mobility metrics to compare commuting behavior by major U.S. occupation sectors. Specifically, it joins stay time distribution patterns with the extraction of “mobility motifs,” a network approach proposed by (Schneider et al. 2013) to characterize individual daily trips. We conclude 9 universal motifs based on two decades of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data joint with a review of existing studies. Gaussian distributions are fitted around the characteristic durations for home and work locations, with peaks around 3.38 and 10.37 hours for home, and 4.43 and 9.32 hours for work. In contrast, the stay time at other locations displays heterogeneity under a power law with an exponent of 1.18 and an exponential cut-off at 2.63 hours.
The project received feedback from reviewers and attendees of the 20th Conference on Complex Systems, during which it was presented as a session talk.
Schneider, C. M., Belik, V., Couronné, T., Smoreda, Z., & González, M. C. (2013). Unravelling daily human mobility motifs. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 10(84), 20130246. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2013.0246