With increasing trends in online shopping, brick-and-mortar retailers have experienced declines in businesses forcing them to close down completely, downsize or go online. Shopping malls and strip malls, for example, have been faced with less foot traffic in recent years, while struggling to retain and attract new businesses to operate in various locations. Similarly, public transit agencies in the U.S have seen declines in ridership. Using a bivariate probit model and consumer-level data to examine the inter-relationship between online shopping, mall visits and public transit use, this study seeks to determine if online shopping activities contribute to the declines in public transit ridership in the U.S. Our results indicate that public transit use is positively associated with mall visits; for consumers who are online shoppers, online shopping creates a negative effect on mall visits thereby reducing their public transit use. This effect, however, is small relative to the effect of car ownership.

随着网上购物趋势的日益增长，实体零售商的业务量下降，迫使它们完全关闭、缩小规模或转向网上。例如，近年来，购物中心和购物中心面临着人流量减少的问题，同时也难以留住和吸引新企业在不同地点开展业务。同样，美国公共交通机构的客流量也有所下降。本研究使用二元概率模型和消费者层面的数据来研究在线购物、商场访问和公共交通使用之间的相互关系，旨在确定在线购物活动是否导致美国公共交通乘客量的下降。公共交通的使用与购物中心的光顾呈正相关；对于网上购物的消费者来说，网上购物对购物中心的访问产生了负面影响，从而减少了他们对公共交通的使用。然而，与汽车拥有量的影响相比，这种影响很小。