Introducing multitasking to the study of travel and ICT: examining its extent and assessing its potential importance

Personal travel is undertaken principally as a means of access: to opportunities, services, social networks and other goods. The Internet now provides an additional form of access, enabling many activities to be reached without recourse to physical mobility by the individual undertaking the activity. However, the social and transport effects of this 'virtual mobility' are uncertain. Here, it is argued that the incidence and properties of multitasking are a necessary part of the assessment of such impacts. Participation in activities and, thus, change in activity participation will not be fully measured without consideration of the parallel conduct of activities. This paper presents a review, empirical evidence and discussion to support this hypothesis. Emergent from an examination of the literature and examined by new empirical evidence are three observations or hypotheses, namely that: (1), failure to consider multitasking leads to the underreporting of key activities; (2), misrepresentation of activity participation tends to be more pronounced for certain key groups; and (3), lack of awareness of multitasking could lead to the flawed measurement and thus misrepresentation of behaviour change over time. Further to these observations from the literature, study findings suggest that multitasking behaviour is also found to vary according to whether the primary activity is being undertaken online or offline. Taken together, the empirical evidence confirms that the consideration of multitasking is likely to have important implications for the study of travel, Internet use and interactions between the two.