Morning larks travel more than night owls? Chronotypical effect on travel frequency through novelty seeking

Abstract

Chronotype is a characterization of people’s propensity to sleep at a particular time, spanning a spectrum from the two extremes of “morning larks,” who go to sleep early and rise early, and “evening owls,” who go to sleep late and rise late. We study the relationship between chronotype and the tendency to seek novelty in travel preference. Surprisingly, in contrast to the case of domain-general novelty seeking, morning larks are more domain-specific in their novelty seeking than night owls in relation to travel. To test the significance of this finding, we explore the downstream behavioral consequences of the tendency to be novelty seeking. Travel frequency for leisure is found to increase with novelty seeking. In addition, chronotype has an indirect effect on travel frequency through its influence on novelty seeking—a mediation relationship moderated by gender, with the effect of chronotype on novelty seeking especially strong among young females.