Understanding Variability, Habit and the Effect of Long Period Activity Plan in Modal Choices: A Day to Day, Week to Week Analysis on Panel Data
Understanding variability in individual behaviour is crucial for the comprehension of travel patterns and for the development and evaluation of planning policies. In the last 30 years a vast body of research has approached the issue in a variety of ways, but there are no studies on the intrinsic variability in the individual preferences for mode choices in absence of external changes (or shocks) in the transportation infrastructures (i.e. introduction of new modes or major reorganization of the transportation system). This requires using continuous panel data. Few papers have studied mode choice with continuous panel data but mainly focused on the panel correlation. In this work the authors use a six-week travel diary survey to study the intrinsic variability in the individual preferences for mode choices, the effect of long period plans and habitual behaviour in the daily mode choices. Mixed logit models are estimated that account for the above effects as well as for systematic and random heterogeneity over individual preferences and responses. The authors also account for correlation over several time periods. The results suggest that individual tastes for time and cost are fairly stable but there is a significant systematic and random heterogeneity around these mean values and in the preferences for the different alternatives. The authors found that there is a strong inertia effect in mode choice that increases with (or is reinforced by) the number of times the same tour is repeated. The sequence of mode choice made is influenced by the duration of the activity and the weekly structure of the activities. Finally, models improve significantly when panel correlation is accounted for. But it seems that inertia can explain to some extent for panel effect.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Cherchi, Elisabetta
- Cirillo, Cinzia
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC
- Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
- Date: 2014
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 16p
- Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Activity choices; Logits; Mode choice; Panel studies; Travel patterns; Travel surveys
- Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01518772
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 14-4646
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 21 2014 11:26AM