Cognitive Hierarchy in Day-to-Day Network Flow Dynamics

Minyu Shen (), Feng Xiao (), Weihua Gu () and Hongbo Ye ()
Additional contact information
Minyu Shen: School of Management Science and Engineering, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China; and Big Data Laboratory on Financial Security and Behavior, SWUFE (Laboratory of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education), Chengdu 611130, China
Feng Xiao: Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610065, China
Weihua Gu: Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom 999077, Hong Kong
Hongbo Ye: Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom 999077, Hong Kong

Transportation Science, 2025, vol. 59, issue 5, 951-971

Abstract: When making route decisions, travelers may engage in a certain degree of reasoning about what others will do in the upcoming day, rendering yesterday’s shortest routes less attractive. This phenomenon was manifested in a recent virtual experiment that mimicked travelers’ repeated daily trip-making process. Unfortunately, prevailing day-to-day traffic dynamic models failed to faithfully reproduce the collected flow evolution data therein. To this end, we propose a day-to-day traffic behavior modeling framework based on the cognitive hierarchy theory, in which travelers with different levels of strategic reasoning capabilities form their own beliefs about lower step travelers’ capabilities when choosing their routes. Two widely studied day-to-day models, the network tatonnement process dynamic and the logit dynamic, are extended into the framework and studied as examples. Calibration of the virtual experiment is performed using the extended network tatonnement process dynamic, which fits the experimental data reasonably well. Our analysis reveals that both extended dynamics exhibit multiple equilibria, one of which corresponds to the classic user equilibrium. We further analyze and characterize these nonuser equilibrium states. Whereas analyzing global stability is intractable because of the presence of multiple equilibria, local stability criteria near equilibria are developed analytically. General insights on how key parameters affect the stability of user equilibria are unveiled.

Keywords: day-to-day traffic dynamics; cognitive hierarchy; strategic thinking; route choice behavior; multiple equilibria; experiment calibration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2024.0890 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:59:y:2025:i:5:p:951-971

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transportation Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().