Studying Physical–Virtual Hybridisation in Everyday Life Through the Time‐Geographic Project Concept

Abstract This study proposes a time‐geographic approach for operationally defining and quantitatively measuring the physical–virtual hybridisation of daily activities. While hybridisation has been proposed to move beyond separating the usage of information and communications technology (ICT) from activity‐travel behaviour, empirical research lacks operational definitions and measures grounded in geography. In response, this study proposes a comprehensive hybridisation analysis approach with two components. First, we propose an analytical framework based on the time‐geographic project concept to operationally define hybridisation elements, namely, hybrid activities, hybrid grounds and hybrid sequences. Second, we develop a combined daily activity and ICT diary to measure these elements by combining ICT‐based and non‐ICT‐based episodes, capturing concurrent foreground and background activities and identifying sequences of hybrid activities and hybrid grounds. A case study in Beijing demonstrates that all everyday projects exhibit hybridisation, including understudied projects such as childcare. Results also reveal widespread hybrid grounds and increasingly complex activity sequences.