Coordination Behavior in Mode Choice: Laboratory Study of Equilibrium Transformation and Selection

Abstract

In a transportation system with multiple equilibria, coordination failure occurs when a group of travelers could achieve the efficient equilibrium but fail because they cannot coordinate their decision‐making under strategic uncertainty. This study investigated factors that might affect coordination behavior in mode choice with both positive and negative externalities. Subjects participated in a mode‐choice game in which they were required to choose between public transport and private car. Positive or negative externalities occurred when subjects chose public transport or private car, respectively, thereby generating two pure‐strategy equilibria in the mode‐choice game. The experimental results indicated that (i) the transparency of descriptive information facilitated not only the convergence to the efficient equilibrium but also the stabilization of choice behavior, (ii) historical experiences of converging to the inefficient equilibrium could affect subjects' initial choices and even equilibrium selection, and (iii) a “higher” barrier between the two equilibria impeded and prolonged the transformation from the inefficient equilibrium to the efficient equilibrium, and a “deeper” attraction basin of the efficient equilibrium was more attractive in equilibrium selection.

Investigating day-to-day route choices based on multi-scenario laboratory experiments, Part I: Route-dependent attraction and its modeling

“…It was shown that the proposed model could satisfactorily reproduce the experimental observations such as the switching rates and equilibrium flow. However, as with many other differential function-based models (Watling, 1999;He and Liu, 2012;Cantarella and Watling, 2016;He and Peeta, 2016;Kumar and Peeta, 2015;Xiao et al, 2016;Ye and Yang, 2017;Xiao et al, 2019), the proposed model converges to a stable equilibrium prediction of route flow, which deviates from the experimental observations of our experiments and those experiments in the existing studies (Iida et al, 1992;Selten et al, 2007;Zhao and Huang, 2016;Ye et al, 2018;Qi et al, 2019;Han et al, 2021). The primary reason is that those models are all deterministic, in which the network flow evolution processes are fully determined (with the probability of 1) given the initial conditions.…”

Impact of Subjective and Objective Factors on Bus Travel Intention

“…The crude urban development model of the past few decades has given too much attention to the overall shape of the city layout and private car travel at the expense of developing public transport [ 1 ]. The negative effects of traffic congestion and environmental degradation brought about by the rapid growth of private cars are becoming increasingly serious [ 2 ]. This has become a focus of concern and a pressing social problem for the government to address.…”

Departure time choice behavior in commute problem with stochastic bottleneck capacity: experiments and modeling

“…To better understand the departure time choice principle of commuters and examine the theoretical assumptions, one can use the method of laboratory experiment, which is a powerful tool for studying people's choice behavior and has been widely used to examine equilibrium (Helbing et al, 2002;Gabuthy et al, 2006;Daniel et al, 2009;Rapoport et al, 2014), investigate the effect of information (van Essen et al, 2019;Qi et al, 2019;Xiao and Lo, 2016;Lu et al 2011Lu et al , 2014Ramadurai and Ukkusuri, 2007;Han et al, 2021), study traffic paradoxes (Ramadurai and Ukkusuri, 2007;Morgan et al, 2009;Rapoport et al, 2009Rapoport et al, , 2014 and assess transportation demand management measures (Hartman, 2012;Aziz et al, 2015;Rey et al, 2016).…”