Choice of season cards in public transport: a study of a Stated Preference experiment

Vincent van den Berg, Eric Kroes and Erik Verhoef

European Transport \ Trasporti Europei, 2008, issue 40, 4-32

Abstract: This paper studies a Stated Preference (SP) experiment on the choice of type of (Rail) season card, conducted among current Dutch Railways season cardholders. They were asked to choose from the following three alternatives: (1) an unrestricted season card, (2) a cheaper season card with peak travel and travel frequency restrictions, and (3) not buying a season card. Multinomial logit (MNL), nested logit and mixed logit models are used to analyse their choices. It is found that MNL underestimates the price sensitivities (as measured by the price elasticities) of the respondents and overestimates their Willingness-to- Pay (WTP) for reductions in the restrictions. The mixed logit estimation shows that there are (unobserved) differences in the marginal utilities of the price of the card (response heterogeneity), and the utility of owning a season card (preference heterogeneity). In the Netherlands a large share of commuters and business travellers receive travel cost compensation from their employer. However, empirical studies often do not control for the effect of travel cost compensation. We find, as expected, that travel cost compensation has a large impact on the price sensitivities and choices of the respondents.

Keywords: SP experiment; Rail season card; Travel cost compensation; Public transport demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10077/6003 (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:sot:journl:y:2008:i:40:p:4-32

Access Statistics for this article

European Transport \ Trasporti Europei is currently edited by Romeo Danielis

More articles in European Transport \ Trasporti Europei from ISTIEE, Institute for the Study of Transport within the European Economic Integration
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Romeo Danielis ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).