A universal opportunity model for human mobility

Predicting human mobility between locations has practical applications in transportation science, spatial economics, sociology and many other fields. For more than 100 years, many human mobility prediction models have been proposed, among which the gravity model analogous to Newton’s law of gravitation is widely used. Another classical model is the intervening opportunity (IO) model, which indicates that an individual selecting a destination is related to both the destination’s opportunities and the intervening opportunities between the origin and the destination. The IO model established from the perspective of individual selection behavior has recently triggered the establishment of many new IO class models. Although these IO class models can achieve accurate prediction at specific spatiotemporal scales, an IO class model that can describe an individual’s destination selection behavior at different spatiotemporal scales is still lacking. Here, we develop a universal opportunity model that considers two human behavioral tendencies: one is the exploratory tendency, and the other is the cautious tendency. Our model establishes a new framework in IO class models and covers the classical radiation model and opportunity priority selection model. Furthermore, we use various mobility data to demonstrate our model’s predictive ability. The results show that our model can better predict human mobility than previous IO class models. Moreover, this model can help us better understand the underlying mechanism of the individual’s destination selection behavior in different types of human mobility.