Assessing the effect of traveler's nationality on daily travel time expenditure using Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Regression models: results from the Belgian national household travel survey.

In this paper, the effect of traveler's nationality on daily travel time expenditure is assessed using data stemming from the 2010 Belgian national household travel survey. In particular, different (zero-inflated) negative binomial models were estimated to isolate the effect of nationality, after controlling for other contributing factors such as socio-demographics, residential characteristics, transport options and temporal characteristics. The results indicate that, even if one controls for a series of other influencing factors, nationality plays a significant role in differences in travel time expenditure. This finding is especially relevant in the development of policy packages that are targeted to tackle social inequalities. From a methodological perspective, different methodological options, i.e. two weighting schemes and two bootstrap solutions, were presented to provide sufficient support for the conclusions. In order to generalize the results in further studies, an oversampling of travelers with a different nationality is strongly recommended. Future research should focus more on the underlying psychological constructs of why ethnic and cultural differences persist, even if one accounts for other determinants.