An analysis of time allocation to in-home and out-of-home discretionary activities across working days and non-working days

This paper formulates a model for the allocation of total weekly discretion ary time of individuals between in-home and out- of-home locations and betw een weekdays and the weekend. The model formulation takes the form of a con tinuous utility-maximizing resource allocation problem. The formulation is applied to an empirical analysis using data drawn from a 1985 time-use surv ey conducted in the Netherlands. This survey gathered time-use information from individuals over a period of one week and also collected detailed hous ehold-personal socio-demographic data. The empirical analysis uses househol d socio-demographics, individual socio-demographics, and work-related chara cteristics as the explanatory variables. Among the explanatory variables, a ge of the individual and work duration during the weekdays appear to be the most important determinants of discretionary time allocation.