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PhD research

PhD research with a choice modelling context is carried out across different schools at the University of Leeds. For initial enquiries, relating to both topics and funding opportunities, please send an e-mail to General Enquiries from where your query will be directed to potential supervisors.

Specific funding opportunities are announced on this site as and when they arise.

Institute for Transport Studies

Current funded PhD positions

Unravelling joint decision processes: the case of business travel

Many decisions involve multiple parties. From a couple choosing which car to buy, to business partners agreeing on a strategy, to employer and employee jointly planning annual leave. Most statistical models used to represent decision-making only consider an individual perspective, limiting the potential for truly understanding and forecasting the role of different players in decision-making in many areas of interest. One such example is business travel, i.e. travel for purposes connected to work (excluding commuting). Business travel accounts for 15 to 20% of total travel worldwide and like other types of travel, it has been substantially impacted by the pandemic. The stark reduction in congestion, pollution and urban temperatures in 2020, as well as the widespread acquisition of remote work skills, have created an attitude shift, with employees wishing for more flexible working conditions and businesses wondering whether some travel activities could be avoided or otherwise modified to cut costs and emissions and improve employee well-being. The current economic crisis is making this issue even more pressing, with businesses and organisations seeking ways to use their resources more efficiently.

Against this backdrop, the present project has two aims:

- From a methodological standpoint, the student will develop a new modelling framework to understand joint decision-making

- From an applied perspective, they will focus on the case study of business travel as a key under-researched example of joint decision which can have important environmental, economic and well-being consequences.

We are looking for a highly motivated student to conduct this PhD research. For more details, please see:
https://phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1719-unravelling-joint-decision-processes-the-case-of-business-travel

Understanding preferences and modelling ‘difficult’ choices through virtual reality experiences

We are looking for a highly motivated student to conduct PhD research in the field of choice modelling. ‘Choice models’ are mathematical models designed to predict and forecast which alternative(s) an individual will choose in a given scenario. These models aim to understand the key factors (including cognitive, emotional, and motivational) that lead to different individuals making different choices. However, alongside sensitivity to the factors influencing the choices (e.g. preference differences regarding travel time and cost in the context of travel mode selection), there is also possible differences in the way in which individuals think and make decisions. For example, there have been psychological theories put forward to explain how and why individuals from the East might think differently to those from the West and how this can lead to markedly different choices (e.g. Nisbett 2004). These differences appear to be particularly prominent in the case of `difficult’ decisions where the alternatives could be categorised as `right’ or `wrong’ and/or there is inherent uncertainty in the outcomes of a choice.

The aim of this project is to advance this further, both methodologically and empirically, by using physiological data combined with choice data in a wide range of VR representations of real-world scenarios to obtain more reliable forecasts of how individuals respond to risky or moral choice scenarios. This will allow us to better understand human reactions to risky situations with uncertain outcomes which can be useful for artificial intelligence-based policy planning. They can also help to better predict choices involving moral aspects, for example, in travel behaviour (policies to promote the uptake of electric vehicles), energy consumption (encouraging carbon neutrality through carbon offsetting schemes) and beyond.

For more details, please see:
https://phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1728-understanding-preferences-and-modelling-difficult-choices-through-virtual-reality-experiences

Developing new behavioural models at the intersection of psychology and econometrics

We are looking for a highly motivated student to conduct PhD research in the field of choice modelling. Choice modelling is a key analytical tool used to understand consumer decisions and valuations and forecast choices across a range of topic areas, including transport, environmental and health economics, and regional science. Their outputs form a key component in guidance underpinning government and industry decisions on changes to policy, infrastructure developments or the introduction of new services or products. This role provides an exciting opportunity to contribute to a major cross-disciplinary research programme at the heart of the Choice Modelling Centre (www.cmc.leeds.ac.uk) set up within the University of Leeds. The five year SYNERGY project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) seeks to unify three key paradigms for the unify three key paradigms for the mathematical modelling of human behaviour, namely: i) process models in psychology and cognate disciplines that seek to explain how decisions are made; ii) econometric and behavioural models that explain which factors influence the decision process and to what extent; and iii) data-driven (machine learning) methods that focus on the outcome of the decision process. The different aims and assumptions of these paradigms have resulted in very distinct strengths and weaknesses for each discipline. Only the synergy of the three will fulfil the promise of producing models that are behaviourally consistent, applicable to real-world problems, computationally tractable, and balance a priori assumptions with data-driven insights.

For more details, please see:
https://phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1643-developing-new-behavioural-models-at-the-intersection-of-psychology-and-econometrics

Developing new behavioural models at the intersection of econometrics and machine learning

We are looking for a highly motivated student to conduct PhD research in the field of choice modelling. Choice modelling is a key analytical tool used to understand consumer decisions and valuations and forecast choices across a range of topic areas, including transport, environmental and health economics, and regional science. Their outputs form a key component in guidance underpinning government and industry decisions on changes to policy, infrastructure developments or the introduction of new services or products. This role provides an exciting opportunity to contribute to a major cross-disciplinary research programme at the heart of the Choice Modelling Centre (www.cmc.leeds.ac.uk) set up within the University of Leeds. The five year SYNERGY project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) seeks to unify three key paradigms for the mathematical modelling of human behaviour, namely: i) process models in psychology and cognate disciplines that seek to explain how decisions are made; ii) econometric and behavioural models that explain which factors influence the decision process and to what extent; and iii) data-driven (machine learning) methods that focus on the outcome of the decision process. The different aims and assumptions of these paradigms have resulted in very distinct strengths and weaknesses for each discipline. Only the synergy of the three will fulfil the promise of producing models that are behaviourally consistent, applicable to real-world problems, computationally tractable, and balance a priori assumptions with data-driven insights.

 

For more details, please see:
Developing new behavioural models at the intersection of econometrics and machine learning | Project Opportunities | PhD | University of Leeds