Attitudinal and situational variables influencing urban mode choice: Some empirical findings

Abstract

A mode choice decision structure incorporating traveler attitudes toward modes and situational constraints is investigated. The major hypothesis tested is that mode choice is determined primarily by situational constraints, such as auto ownership and income, secondly by the quality of alternative modes.The structure of the mode choice process is analyzed with respect to (1) applicability of certain choice criterion forms; (2) psychological weighting of modal attributes in the choice criterion; (3) strength of logit, probit, and discriminant functional forms; (4) the relative strength of socio-economic and attitudinal variables in predicting mode choice. An evaluation is made of 50 binary choice models fitted to a sample of 471 randomly drawn urban travelers. Results indicate that (1) the four choice criterion forms tested are all about equal in predictive strength; (2) psychological weighting has no effect on model strength, but does influence which modal attributes appear to determine choice; (3) the three functional forms tested are all about equal in strength;(4) situational factors account for 80-90% of variation explained by the models, attitudes toward modes 10-20%, thus confirming the primary hypothesis. Implications of these results for mode choice modeling and transit planning are discussed.

Factors influencing destination choice for the urban grocery shopping trip

“…While disaggregate methodologies have been applied successfully to choice models in the field of urban transportation research (McFadden, 1968(McFadden, , 1973Lerman and Ben-Akiva, 1975;Burns et al, 1975) and in a few cases have also been applied to attitudinal data (Hartgen, 1974;Constantino et al, 1974;Recker and Golob, 1976;Recker and Stevens, 1976), these analyses have almost exclusively been concerned with modal choice.…”

The importance of attitudes in the decision to use mass transit

“…Three of these studies will be examined here. Hartgen (1974) analyzed Philadelphia data collected by Paine et al (1969) which included satisfaction and importance ratings for thirty-three attributes by 471 people. It should be emphasized that these attributes included both objectively measurable variables (e.g., "avoid walking more than one block") and subjective variables (e.g., "comfortable").…”

The relationship between transportation perceptions and behavior over time

“…Empirical results, however, are mixed. Hartgen (1974) and subsequently Howe and Cohen (1976)noted the superiority of situational factors in explaining mode choices of large area samples. Dobson and Kehoe (1974) found use of transit was unrelated to perceptual viewpoints and Johnson (1975a) found most attitudinal variables to be insignificant in a choice model.…”