01697609

Component

Surveys with stated choice experiments (SCE) are widely used to examine travel choice behavior in hypothetical choice contexts and to derive values of time and reliability for transport project appraisal purposes. In contrast to revealed choices, stated choices are inconsequential, which is one of the reasons why external validity of SCE outcomes is often questioned. In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of consequentiality on behavior in a route choice context. They recruited 55 people to complete a typical SCE as well as to participate in an SCE where the chosen route (and hence travel time) needs to be experienced in a driving simulator and where actual money needs to be paid for toll roads. The choices were analyzed by estimating a heteroscedastic panel mixed logit model. The authors did not find evidence that the value of time and the value of travel time reliability changed when they added consequences to the route choice tasks, except for drivers with low income where a significantly lower value of time was found. Further, they found a significantly larger error variance (smaller scale) from the analyst’s perspective when choices were made in the driving simulators. This is similar to findings in the literature when comparing stated with revealed preference data and suggests that adding consequentiality to SCEs may elicit behavior closer to the true preferences and hence lead to model estimates that are more valuable when used in model application.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Standing Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values.

19-02903

English

19p

2019

Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Photos; References; Tables

Behavior; Drivers; Driving simulators; Logits; Route choice; Stated preferences; Tolls; Travel surveys; Travel time; Value of time

Consequences

Highways; Planning and Forecasting

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2019 Paper #19-02903

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 7 2018 9:32AM