Patricia L. Mokhtarian

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Publications

Patricia L. Mokhtarian

Clifford and William Greene, Jr. Professor

Regents Professor

Email Address

patmokh@gatech.edu

Telephone

404.385.1443

Office Building

Sustainable Education Building

Office Room Number

322

Biography

Patricia Mokhtarian is a Regents Professor and the Clifford and William Greene, Jr. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2013, she served 23 years on the CEE faculty at the University of California, Davis, after spending several years in regional transportation planning and consulting in Southern California. Prof. Mokhtarian has specialized in the study of attitudinal influences on travel behavior for more than 45 years, and has authored or co-authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters and research reports. She is among the most highly-cited scholars in travel behavior research, with more than 41,000 citations and an h-index of 98 (Google Scholar). She is a past Chair of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from that society in 2021. Prof. Mokhtarian was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2024, and serves on the editorial boards of ten transportation journals.

Research

A key research interest has been the impact of telecommunications technology on travel behavior (particularly teleworking adoption and impacts). Additional interests include the influence of the built environment on travel behavior, accounting for self-selection biases in modeling behavior, attitudes toward travel itself, time use and multitasking, incorporating attitudes into practice-oriented travel demand forecasting models, impacts of autonomous vehicles, congestion-response behavior, and subjective well-being.

Education

Ph.D.	Northwestern University	1981
M.S.	Northwestern University	1977
B.A.	Florida State University	1975

Teaching

At the undergraduate level, Prof. Mokhtarian teaches upper-division probability and statistics, and at the graduate level she teaches statistical analysis, survey (questionnaire) design and analysis, and discrete choice modeling.

Distinctions & Awards

Invited speaker, endowed lecture series: “How Much Do Attitudinal Variables Improve Travel Demand Models? Evaluation Using an Overlap Sample from an Attitude-rich Survey and the 2017 National Household Travel Survey”. University of Michigan, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Richart-Woods Lecture, February 13, 2025.
Appointed Regents’ Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024.
Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 2024.
In 2024, my student Dr. Xinyi Wang received the prestigious and competitive Eric I. Pas Dissertation Prize of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research, given to the best doctoral thesis in travel behavior in the world, among those completed in calendar year 2023.
Best PhD Thesis Award to my student Dr. Xinyi Wang, Sigma Xi, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024.
Best PhD Thesis Award to my student Dr. Xinyi Wang, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023.
“Latent class model with an error structure: Investigating potential unobserved associations between latent segmentation and behavior generation” (by Sung Hoo Kim and Patricia L. Mokhtarian) selected for the Outstanding Paper Award of Committee AEP 35 (The Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Transportation Choices) of the Transportation Research Board, 2024 Annual Meeting.
One of six members (and the only woman) of the inaugural class of Northwestern University Transportation Center Fellows, recognizing “impactful contributions to the transportation profession in research, policy, practice or education, and special connections to the Transportation Center and Northwestern University”, November 17, 2023.
My students won the (U.S.) Council of University Transportation Centers Wootan Awards for Outstanding PhD Dissertation in Policy & Planning (F. Atiyya Shaw) and Outstanding MS Thesis in Policy & Planning (Xinyi Wang), in 2021.
International Association for Travel Behaviour Research 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award, given to someone who has “made fundamental and sustained contributions to travel behaviour research for a substantial period (typically at least 25 years) up to the present time”; is “widely known, at the very least among the IATBR community”; and has “influenced the field through her/his writings, teaching, service, and nurturing of younger professionals”, June 2, 2021 online, and December 14, 2022 in person.
Outstanding Industry Contributor Award, “given to an individual who in embodying the Zephyr Principles, has selflessly contributed to the good of the industry through the body of their work”, bestowed by the Zephyr Foundation (https://zephyrtransport.org/), a non-profit dedicated to “advancing rigorous transportation and land use decision-making for the public good by advocating for and supporting improved travel analysis, and facilitating its implementation”, March 24, 2021.
Clifford and William Greene, Jr. Professorship, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021 – present.
Named a National Associate of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, February 5, 2020.
“It’s Not All Fun and Games: An Investigation of the Reported Benefits and Disadvantages of Conducting Activities while Commuting” (by F. Atiyya Shaw, Aliaksandr Malokin, Patricia L. Mokhtarian, and Giovanni Circella, Travel Behaviour and Society 17, 2019, 8-25) selected for the journal’s Outstanding Paper Award for 2019: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/travel-behaviour-and-society/awards/tbs-outstanding-paper-award-2019.
*The times they are a-changin’: What do the expanding uses of travel time portend for policy, planning, and life? Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecture, 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, January 8, 2018, Washington, DC. “The lectureship recognizes the career contributions and achievements of an individual in one of the areas covered by the TRB’s Technical Activities Division.”
Eminent Professor Lecture: The study of multitasking and polychronicity, and its application to travel-based multitasking in autonomous vehicles. Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, May 23, 2016.
Invited speaker, endowed lecture series: Challenging conventional transport planning practice: Reflections on the “real” utility of travel. Ogden Transport Lecture, Institute of Transport Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, May 19, 2016.
Susan G. and Christopher D. Pappas Professorship, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016 – 2021.
Sustained Research Award, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015.
PROFILES, TR News (the bimonthly magazine of the Transportation Research Board), September/October 2014. “The PROFILES honor and highlight the professional achievements and contributions of select TRB leaders.”
Invited speaker, endowed lecture series: What Good is it? Reflections on the Utility of Travel in a Resource-Constrained Era, Eighth Annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture in Transportation, University of California, Los Angeles, October 9, 2014.
Invited speaker, university-wide endowed lecture series: The Implications of Travel-Based Multitasking for Modeling and Policy: A Conceptual Exploration and Some Preliminary Empirical Results. Burack Lecture, University of Vermont, Burlington, April 14, 2014.
Invited talk (December 12, 2013) for the Distinguished Transport Lecture Series hosted by the University of Hong Kong Institute of Transport Studies.
My students won the (U.S.) Council of University Transportation Centers Wootan Awards for Outstanding PhD Dissertation in Policy & Planning in 2006 (Xinyu Jason Cao) and 2005 (Sangho Choo).
My student (Michael Bagley) earned Honorable Mention in the 1999 International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR) Eric I. Pas Dissertation Prize competition, the most prestigious student prize in travel behavior.

Publications

“Using marker statements to impute attitudes: evaluating their efficacy in vehicle ownership models”, by Jason M. Soria and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-025-10652-3.
“How Will People Spend Travel Time in Autonomous Vehicles? A Four-Region Study Focusing on Heterogeneous Preferences”, by Ilsu Kim, Yongsung Lee, Patricia L. Mokhtarian, and Giovanni Circella. Transportation, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-025-10627-4.
“Market Segmentation of an Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) Air Taxi Commuting Service in Five Large U.S. Cities”, by Laurie A. Garrow, Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Brian J. German, John S. Glodek, and Caroline E. Leonard. Transportation Research Part A 195, 104267, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2024.104267.
“Latent class models with an error structure: Investigating potential unobserved associations between latent segmentation and behavior generation”, by Sung Hoo Kim and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Journal of Choice Modelling 53, 100519, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocm.2024.100519.
“Pursuing the impossible (?) dream: Incorporating attitudes into practice-ready travel demand forecasting models”, by Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation Research A 190, 104254, 2024. Invited paper based on Lifetime Achievement Award keynote talk. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2024.104254.
“Examining the treatment effect of teleworking on vehicle-miles driven: Applying an ordered probit selection model and incorporating the role of travel stress”, by Xinyi Wang and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation Research A 186, 104072, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2024.104072.
“A note on the sample selection (switching regression) model and treatment effects for a log-transformed outcome variable, in the context of residential self-selection”, by Sung Hoo Kim and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation 51, 2024, 1723–1757. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-023-10384-2.
“Finite mixture (or latent class) modeling in transportation: Trends, usage, potential, and future directions”, by Sung Hoo Kim and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation Research Part B 172, 134-173, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trb.2023.03.001.
“The Role of Attitudes in Perceptions of Bicycle Facilities: A Latent-Class Regression Approach”, by Calvin Clark, Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Giovanni Circella, and Kari Watkins. Transportation Research Part F 77, 129-148, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2020.12.006.
“Do Millennials Value Travel Time Differently because of Productive Multitasking? A Revealed Preference Study of Northern California Commuters”, by Aliaksandr Malokin, Giovanni Circella, and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation 48, 2787–2823, 2021. Open access, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-020-10148-2.
“What Drives the Gap? Applying the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Method to Examine Generational Differences in Transportation-Related Attitudes”, by Ali Etezady, F. Atiyya Shaw, Giovanni Circella, and Patricia L. Mokhtarian. Transportation 48, 857-883, 2021. Open access, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-020-10080-5.
“It’s Not All Fun and Games: An Investigation of the Reported Benefits and Disadvantages of Conducting Activities while Commuting”, by F. Atiyya Shaw, Aliaksandr Malokin, Patricia L. Mokhtarian, and Giovanni Circella. Travel Behaviour and Society 17, 2019, 8-25. Selected for the journal’s Outstanding Paper Award for 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2019.05.008.

In the News

Patricia Mokhtarian Named Regents' Professor

17 April 2024

Mokhtarian is one of five College of Engineering faculty members honored with Regents’ appointments by the University System of Georgia's Board of Regents. The titles are the highest distinction from the system and recognize faculty members for academic, innovation, and entrepreneurial excellence.

College of Engineering

A woman wearing headphones sitting in front of a computer screen

Generating Buzz: Remote Work in a Post-Pandemic World

01 April 2024

Professor Patricia Mokhtarian's research examines the effects of telecommunications technology on travel behavior and multitasking attitudes. In the latest episode of the Generating Buzz podcast, she shares her opinion on why remote work is here to stay and what aspects of office culture are worth holding on to.

Generating Buzz

Patricia Mokhtarian Elected to National Academy of Engineering

06 February 2024

Two College of Engineering professors are among the newest members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the organization announced Feb. 6. Patricia Mokhtarian and David Sholl are part of a 2024 class that includes 114 new members and 21 international members. Election to the NAE is an honor bestowed on just 2,600 professionals worldwide.

College of Engineering