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 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 min, with an Interquartile Range of 28.14 min. 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 telephone interviews. 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.

几十年来，家庭旅行调查一直用于收集个人和家庭的旅行行为。然而，自我报告的调查容易出现回忆偏差，因为受访者可能很难准确地回忆和报告他们的活动。本研究通过在个人层面上匹配来自两个来源（即丹麦国家旅行调查 (TU) 和丹麦智能卡系统（雷杰科特）。仅根据受访者声明的时空旅行行为，将调查受访者与 Rejsekort 数据中的旅行卡进行匹配。大约 70% 的受访者成功匹配了 Rejsekort 旅行卡。结果显示，报告错误的中位时间为 11.34 分钟，四分位距为 28.14 分钟。此外，还进行了统计分析，以探讨调查受访者的报告错误与其社会经济和人口特征之间的关系。结果表明，女性和有固定日程的受访者在报告出行时间方面总体上比男性和有灵活日程的受访者更准确。此外，与周末和节假日或通过电话采访报告的行程相比，工作日或通过互联网报告的行程显示出更高的准确性。这种分类分析提供了宝贵的见解，可以帮助改进旅行调查的设计和分析，以及解释基于旅行调查的应用程序中报告错误/偏差。此外，它还提供了调查受访者旅行回忆心理的宝贵见解。