Cross-border activity-travel patterns: the Luxembourg residents perspective

Despite its small size (2586 km2), the Grand-duchy of Luxembourg is a strong economic
locomotive. Indeed, among the 380 000 available jobs in the country, 44% are occupied by
cross-border workers from France, Belgium and Germany. While the commuting behavior and
the activity chains of the cross-border workers have been largely studied (Carpentier, 2012,
Drevon et al., 2013, Gerber, 2012) this is not the case for the population living in Luxembourg.
This scientific contribution aims at analyzing the daily activity chains of resident population.
Do residents perform all their activities in Luxembourg? If not, in which country do they go
and for which type of activity? Due to the small size of the country and plausible attraction for
surrounding countries (linked to familial reasons, nationality, past residential place of residence,
differentials in prices etc.) the people living in Luxembourg might conduct some activities in
Belgium, France or Germany.
Between June and July 2015, a multi-day survey has been implemented on 52 staff members of
the University of Luxembourg working, at that time, at Walferdange campus. These individuals
provided information regarding their daily activities (activity duration and location, activity type)
and their travel behavior (travelling time and mode) for two weeks. Among the respondents, 35
participants are living in Luxembourg and provided information for 490 days and 1850 activities
in total. The studied population is interesting in many aspects. First of all, the individuals were
working in Walferdange, a city located 8 km north of Luxembourg-city, so a central geographic
position. Second, this is a high-qualified and international population. Actually, the education
level of the respondents is high (45% have a PhD degree, 37% a master degree) and many of
them moved to Luxembourg because of the attractive labour market. Third, the income of the
surveyed population is higher than the average national salary.
With its limited area, one would think that individuals living in Luxembourg would cross the
borders quite often for shopping, leisure activities...However, Luxembourg has abundant and
various services (shopping malls, leisure and cultural places ...). Indeed close to 30% of the
respondents had all their activities in Luxembourg and out of the 1850 total activities, only 130
had been done in a neighboring country. But on the other hand, one fourth of the respondents
had done 75% of total activities outside Luxembourg.
In a way to better understand the mobility behavior of resident population, a detailed activity
chain analysis will be presented. This will be completed by a spatial analysis of the activities,
in order to examine the effects of the borders on non-work related activities. Finally, different
activity behaviors will be identified through a multivariate analysis. The results of this explorative analysis will be compared to the abundant literature regarding the behavior of the cross-borders workers.