Immigrants' language skills and carpooling as need-based social networking: Evidence from large-scale national survey data. (October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Xu, Dafeng; Zhang, Yuxin
• Is Part Of: Travel behaviour and society. Volume 29(2022)
• Page Start: 236
• Page End: 245
• Publication Date: 2022-10
• Subjects: Need-based -- Social network -- Immigrants -- English proficiency -- Carpooling; Transportation -- Periodicals; Population geography -- Periodicals; 303.48305
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tbs.2022.06.012
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2214-367X

Abstract

Highlights: I model immigrants' carpooling as networking behaviors driven by language needs. I estimate the effect of English proficiency on immigrants' carpooling outcomes. Results show that immigrants with lower English skills are more likely to carpool. Immigrants with lower English skills also tend to carpool with more co-riders. The majority of the effect can be explained by the direct effect of language skills. Abstract: Individuals often join social networks when lacking skills or resources. We study the motivation behind need-based networking in the context of transportation: using American Community Survey data, we examine how English proficiency is related to immigrants' carpooling behaviors. To conduct causal inference, we follow the standard approach and employ an instrumental variable strategy, in which we use the interaction term between age at arrival and linguistic origin to instrument for English proficiency, in additional to controlling for individual and geographic variables. Results support the hypothesis of "need-based networking": lower degrees of English proficiency are associated with higher carpooling probabilities and larger carpooling networks. A mediating analysis further shows that while English proficiency might indirectly affect carpooling behaviors through socioeconomic channels, the direct effect of English proficiency explains the majority of the overall effect.