Coping with Unreliable Transportation When Collecting Children: Examining Parents’ Behavior with Cumulative Prospect Theory

This paper explores the merits of cumulative prospect theory (CPT) in the context of travelers’ coping with unreliable transport networks through the estimation of coefficients characterizing CPT’s value and weighting functions. Attention is directed towards working parents’ trips to collect their child(ren) from the nursery at the end of workday because of parents’ strong sensitivity to the possibility of late arrivals there. The estimation results provide further evidence to series of violations of the axioms underlying expected utility theory (EUT) in a stated choice experiment of parents’ coping with unreliable transport networks en route to the nursery. They also show that linkages exist between respondent’s everyday life and their responses in the stated choice experiment and, by implication, the shape of CPT’s value function. It is therefore concluded that analytical frameworks for describing activity-travel behavior in situations of unreliability, variability, and uncertainty should be both psychologically and socially realistic.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Schwanen, Tim
  • Ettema, Dick
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2007-1-21 to 2007-1-25
• Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 21
• Monograph Title: TRB 86th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Children; Choice models; Estimation theory; Logits; Risk analysis; Scheduling; Transportation policy; Travel time; Utility theory; Variance
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Data and Information Technology; Economics; Highways; Policy; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01055842
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 07-1393
• Files: BTRIS, TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Aug 28 2007 10:56AM