Household travel surveys have been used for decades to collect individuals and households' travel behavior. However, self-reported surveys are subject to recall bias, as respondents might struggle to recall and report their activities accurately. This study addresses examines the time reporting error of public transit users in a nationwide household travel survey by matching, at the individual level, five consecutive years of data from two sources, namely the Danish National Travel Survey (TU) and the Danish Smart Card system (Rejsekort). Survey respondents are matched with travel cards from the Rejsekort data solely based on the respondents' declared spatiotemporal travel behavior. Approximately, 70% of the respondents were successfully matched with Rejsekort travel cards. The findings reveal a median time reporting error of 11.34 minutes, with an Interquartile Range of 28.14 minutes. Furthermore, a statistical analysis was performed to explore the relationships between the survey respondents' reporting error and their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. The results indicate that females and respondents with a fixed schedule are in general more accurate than males and respondents with a flexible schedule in reporting their times of travel. Moreover, trips reported during weekdays or via the internet displayed higher accuracies compared to trips reported during weekends and holidays or via telephones. This disaggregated analysis provides valuable insights that could help in improving the design and analysis of travel surveys, as well accounting for reporting errors/biases in travel survey-based applications. Furthermore, it offers valuable insights underlying the psychology of travel recall by survey respondents.

翻译：家庭出行调查数十年来被用于收集个人和家庭的出行行为数据。然而，自我报告式调查易受回忆偏差影响，受访者可能难以准确回忆和报告其活动。本研究通过个体层面匹配丹麦国家出行调查（TU）与丹麦智能卡系统（Rejsekort）连续五年的数据，分析了全国性家庭出行调查中公共交通用户的时间报告误差。调查受访者完全基于其申报的时空出行行为与Rejsekort出行卡进行匹配。约70%的受访者成功匹配至Rejsekort卡片。研究发现时间报告误差中位数为11.34分钟，四分位距为28.14分钟。此外，通过统计分析探究了调查受访者的报告误差与其社会经济及人口特征之间的关系。结果表明，女性及固定作息受访者的出行时间报告精度通常优于男性及弹性作息受访者。此外，工作日或通过网络报告的出行精度高于周末、节假日或通过电话报告的出行。这种分体分析为改进出行调查的设计与分析、以及在基于出行调查的应用中校正报告误差/偏差提供了重要见解。同时，该研究还揭示了受访者出行回忆的潜在心理机制。