Benjamin Gramsch-Calvo


Last Name

Gramsch-Calvo

First Name

Benjamin

ORCID

0000-0001-6599-864X

Organisational unit

03823 - Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne / Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne

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2021 - 202629
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Publications1 - 10 of 29
  • The Importance of the Social Environment on Leisure Destination Choice
    Item type: Working Paper
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W. (2024)
    Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung
    Individuals are fond of belonging to a social environment with a similar social background, which can impact the individual’s decision to visit specific venues for leisure activities. Using data from Zurich, we have measured the preference for a social environment in four categories of leisure venues: restaurants, cafes, bars, and nightclubs; the estimation was performed using a mixed multinomial logit model to see how homophily for socioeconomic characteristics can impact the decisions of choosing a leisure venue. The models included three homophilic preferences: age, income, and cultural origin as variables of interest. The results show a positive impact of the three variables studied: age is the most relevant in all venue categories, income shows a higher relevance when individuals choose restaurants or cafes, and cultural background is more important in bars and nightclubs. These results show that the socioeconomic characteristics of the social environment are relevant for the choice of leisure destination. These findings can contribute to the formulation of policies to create more diverse leisure environments and socially cohesive communities.
  • Socially motivated travel
    Item type: Presentation
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin (2025)
  • The effect of dynamic lockdowns on public transport demand in times of COVID-19
    Item type: Journal Article
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Guevara, C. Angelo; Munizaga, Marcela; et al. (2022)
    Transport Policy
    Governments around the globe have taken different measures to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, including the lockdown of people to decrease infections. The effect of such a strategy on transport demand is important not only for the current pandemic but also to understand changes in transport use and for future emergencies. We analyse a 2019–2020 database of smartcard data of trips from the city of Santiago, Chile, which followed a dynamic lockdown strategy in which its municipalities were temporarily restricted. We use this variation over time across municipalities to study the effect of lockdowns on public transportation using trips on buses and metro, accounting for the variation of municipalities that were under lockdown in a given day. We found a decrease of 72.3% at the beginning of the pandemic when schools suspended in-person classes, while the dynamic lockdowns reduced public transport demand by 12.1%. We also found that the effect of lockdowns decreased after the fifth week of their application, suggesting a short-term effectiveness of such policy to reduce mobility. Regarding sociodemographic effects, we found that lockdowns have a stronger impact on reducing public transport demand in municipalities with a larger proportion of the elderly population (2% additional reduction per 1% increase in the share of the elderly population) and high-income households (16% additional reduction for 1000 USD increase in GDP per capita).
  • Exploring the influence of social relations and knowledge of the urban environment on leisure travel
    Item type: Journal Article
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W. (2024)
    Journal of Transport Geography
    Most leisure travel is motivated by interactions within one’s social network, which influence the choice of activities undertaken in the city. In this paper, we employ a structural regression model to distinguish between the direct effect of social relations on leisure travel —measured as venue variety and activity space— and a complementary effect through the knowledge of the urban environment. The model was applied to a survey conducted in Zurich, Switzerland. The results demonstrate that individuals with stronger social relations are more aware of the activities that can be performed in the city. Furthermore, social relations serve as a stronger explanatory variable for leisure activity space, whereas knowledge of the urban environment has more influence on venue variety. Accessibility also plays a significant role; higher accessibility reduces leisure activity space while increasing venue variety.
  • Meet me halfway
    Item type: Working Paper
    Ji, Joanna; Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W.; et al. (2024)
    Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung
    How far are you literally willing to go to meet your friends and loved ones? Our study breaks down the different factors that influence leisure destination choice between pairs of socially connected people - friends, family, acquaintances. Using a novel dataset of self-reported frequently visited leisure destinations in Zurich, Switzerland, we estimate two joint destination choice models that in addition to joint travel impedance and zonal attractiveness, explicitly consider relationship attributes, such as relationship length, relationship strength or gender homophily. Results suggest that the impact of travel distances on utility differ considerably for home visits and out-of-home leisure, with the marginal disutility of travel being more than three times larger for out-of-home leisure for some pairs. At the same time, we show that the disutility of travel is mitigated by stronger and longer relationships, suggesting a higher willingness to travel further to meet with strong social ties. These results provide new insights on the behavioral mechanism behind joint activities, a subject that has been gaining attention in recent years. Such behavioral insights are not only important to improve the behavioral realism of activity-based models but have the potential of being incorporated in agent-based representations of such models.
  • Meet me halfway
    Item type: Conference Poster
    Ji, Joanna; Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W.; et al. (2025)
  • Place generator & place interpreter
    Item type: Working Paper
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W. (2023)
    When observing the temporal trajectory of an individual, there is a high probability of visiting a known place; this is due to the central component of habit and routine in human mobility behavior. To understand those routine activities, we propose a new survey method: the Place Generator & the Place Interpreter, based on the name generator and name interpreter survey methodology for ego-centric social networks. In the survey, we asked the participants to name the locations they regularly visit for leisure, by category. This methodology captures the characteristics of the locations and the reasons to be chosen. We tested the methodology in the Zurich Metropolitan Area in Switzerland, focusing on urban leisure activities and the social environment of the locations. Hence, we ask the individuals to describe the reasons for choosing that specific location and the socio-demographic characteristics of the other visitors. This methodology worked well when compared with earlier long-duration GPS tracking surveys. Respondents report, on average, 9.85 locations for nine types of locations, mainly supermarkets and restaurants or cafes, and respondents can describe their similarities with other visitors to that location. The survey is complemented with a survey of sociodemographic characteristics and the respondent's ego-centric social network to get information on social connections and their impact on leisure activity.
  • Social networks, location choice and urban diversity
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W. (2022)
  • Exploring the impact of the social network geography on the individual’s activity space
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Axhausen, Kay W. (2023)
  • Exploring the impact of increasing accessibility by proximity on leisure social diversity
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Gramsch-Calvo, Benjamin; Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne; Axhausen, Kay W. (2025)
Publications1 - 10 of 29