A Close Examination of Online Search Flows and Human Travel Flows

Keywords: Spatial interactions, flows, distance decay
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 3

Abstract

Spatial interaction phenomena can happen in both physical space and virtual space. While the former has been studied extensively in fields like transportation, the latter has yet to be fully exploited. In this study, we closely compare two types of spatial interactions, namely human travel flows and online search flows, from multiple perspectives. The travel flows record the aggregated trips between two cities, while the search flows represent people from one city search a topic relevant to another city. We first evaluate the correlations between search flows and travel flows, and whether the correlations decay as the distance between cities increases. We then examine the spatial spillover effect, to see if search flows from city A to city B can impact travel flows from A to B and B’s neighboring cities. Finally, we examine the potential temporal sequence between the two types of flows, e.g., a large volume of search flows could lead to corresponding travel flows shortly afterward. Our findings can help us gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between flows that involve physical movements or not, and benefit relevant domains such as tourism, regional planning, and emergency management.