The effects of attitudes and personality traits on mode choice

Abstract

We hypothesise that differences in peopleÕs attitudes and personality traits lead them to attribute varying importance to environmental considerations, safety, comfort, convenience and flexibility. Differences in personality traits can be revealed not only in the individualsÕ choice of transport, but also in other actions of their everyday lives-such as how much they recycle, whether they take precautions or avoid dangerous pursuits. Conditioning on a set of exogenous individual characteristics, we use indicators of attitudes and personality traits to form latent variables for inclusion in an, otherwise standard, discrete mode choice model. With a sample of Swedish commuters, we find that both attitudes towards flexibility and comfort, as well as being pro-environmentally inclined, influence the individualÕs choice of mode. Although modal time and cost still are important, it follows that there are other ways, apart from economic incentives, to attract individuals to the, from societyÕs perspective, desirable public modes of transport. Our results should provide useful information to policy-makers and transportation planners developing sustainable transportation systems.

Analysis of Socio-spatial Differentiation in Transport Mode Choice Preferences

“…One should also take care about who travels since different categories of citizens obviously have different trip patterns. Such findings are in accordance with the results of similar studies that focus on the influence of different factors on the usage of car transport [26].…”

Improving the analysis of road pricing acceptability surveys by using hybrid models

“…This result highlights the fact that the incorporation of psychological factors in a Random Utility Model (RUM) leads to a more behaviorally realistic representation of the choice process. In fact, an hybrid model reveals the weight of the latent psychosocial variables in usersstakeholders decisions and identifies their complementary explanatory power with regard to observable variables like toll level, income level and type of stakeholder (Golob, 2001;Pendleton and Shonkwiler, 2001;Fujii and Garling, 2003;Vredin Johansson et al, 2006). This research shows that pricing policy for European road networks faces considerable problems as to its acceptability by the relevant stakeholder groups.…”

“…Therefore we have chosen the third method, with sequential integration. It has the drawback of not jointly using all the available information, but it is easier to apply and gives good results in terms of coefficient estimations (Ashok et al, 2002;Vredin et al, 2006;Raveau et al, 2010). In this case, we have adopted a compromise solution introducing utility as a latent variable to reduce the measurement errors of the latent variable.…”

“…The latent variable model is implemented by a MIMIC (Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause) model (Vredin Johansson et al, 2006). The introduction of a MIMIC model can combine explanatory variables (s rq ) jointly with fairness indicators (y pq ) and our pseudo-utiliy (U q ) to estimate the latent variable of fairness {t] q ).…”

Incorporating social interaction into hybrid choice models

“…That is, the framework of HCM that has been developed to enrich the behavioral realism of DCM by accounting for latent factors such as perceptions and attitudes and employing more flexible error structures. The framework of the HCM has been applied in various transportation contexts, such as mode choice (Johansson et al 2006;Polydoropoulou et al 2013;, vehicle purchase (Bolduc et al 2008) and route choice (Tsirimpa and Polydoropoulou 2007).…”