Structural equation analysis of interactions between job-housing relations, transport mode and commuting times in Beijing

Because of the significance of commuting to daily trip making and traffic congestion, the travel between home and workplace has been a topic of research for decades. Since commuting is resulted from the separation between work place and residential place, the job-housing relation is one of the major determinants of commuting patterns. The relationships between job-housing relation and commuting patterns in the West have been extensively studied. There is, however, hardly any reported study on commuting patterns in China. It is well known that the job-housing relation in China had been dictated and is still largely influenced by the so-called Danwei system, in which work units provide employees housing at places close to or even in the same location of the workplace. We believe that such a unique job-housing relation may lead to the commuting patterns largely different from that observed in the West and thus a study on the relations between the two may enrich the literature on commuting behavior. To that end, we apply the structural equation models to investigate the interactions between sources of housing (provided by work unit or not), job-housing relation, transport mode and commuting time. The sample involves 736 employed heads of households, which is derived from a survey conducted in Beijing in 2001. The results show that the Danwei system in China has led to closer job-housing relation, higher propensity towards environmental friendly transport mode and shorter commuting time. This finding is perhaps in support of the job-housing balance argument.