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Memory, expectation formation and scheduling choices.
Limited memory capacity, retrieval constraints and anchoring are central to expectation formation processes. We develop a model of adaptive expectations where individuals are able to store only a finite number of past experiences of a stochastic state variable. Retrieval of these experiences is probabilistic and subject to error. We apply the model to scheduling choices of commuters and demonstrate that memory constraints lead to sub-optimal choices. We analytically and numerically show how memory-based adaptive expectations may substantially increase commuters’ willingness-to-pay for reductions in travel time variability, relative to the rational expectations outcome.
Koster, P., Peer, S. & Dekker, T. (2015), Memory, expectation formation and scheduling choices. Economics of Transportation, 4 (4), pp 256-265.
Why live far? — Insights from modeling residential location choice in Bangladesh.
Increasing commute distances often lead to increased auto-dependency and is a major problem in many developed as well as developing countries. While in developed countries, the propensity to commute long distances generally originates from the preference to work in the core of the city and live in the suburb or periphery, in developing countries, the trend is often quite the opposite. For example, in Bangladesh, people generally have a strong preference to live at the heart of the major cities even if they work at the peripheral areas of the city, in another city or in a rural area. Further, it is also not uncommon to maintain split-families where the earning member of the family lives near the workplace while the rest of the family is based in a big city (subject to affordability). These phenomena lead to substantial increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and add burden to the transport infrastructure. The focus of the research is to explore the key factors that induce middle and upper-middle class commuters in Bangladesh to live away from their workplace and/or maintain split-families. A case study is conducted using Stated Preference (SP) surveys conducted among the faculty members of two universities: one located at the periphery of the capital city and the other quite far away. Discrete Choice Models are developed using the collected data. Results reveal that albeit some differences, for both cases, the choices are strongly driven by quality of the education institutes and the house rent. Factors like gender, income and car-ownership, which traditionally play a strong role in the context of developed countries, are found to be of less significance. The models, though estimated with limited data, provide useful insights about the factors that drive residential location choices in the context of a developing country and can help in formulating policies for encouraging people to live closer to their workplaces and thereby reduce commuter VMT.
Choudhury, C.F. & Ayaz, S.B. (2015), Why live far? — Insights from modeling residential location choice in Bangladesh. Journal of Transport Geography, 48, pp 1-9.
The role of patients’ age on their preferences for choosing additional blood pressure-lowering drugs: a discrete choice experiment in patients with diabetes.
Objectives To assess whether patients’ willingness to add a blood pressure-lowering drug and the importance they attach to specific treatment characteristics differ among age groups in patients with type 2 diabetes. Materials and Methods Patients being prescribed at least an oral glucose-lowering and a blood pressure-lowering drug completed a questionnaire including a discrete choice experiment. This experiment contained choice sets with hypothetical blood pressure-lowering drugs and a no additional drug alternative, which differed in their characteristics (i.e. effects and intake moments). Differences in willingness to add a drug were compared between patients <75 years (non-aged) and ≥75 years (aged) using Pearson χ2-tests. Multinomial logit models were used to assess and compare the importance attached to the characteristics. Results Of the 161 patients who completed the questionnaire, 151 (72%) could be included in the analyses (mean age 68 years; 42% female). Aged patients were less willing to add a drug than non-aged patients (67% versus 84% respectively; P = 0.017). In both age groups, the effect on blood pressure was most important for choosing a drug, followed by the risk of adverse drug events and the risk of death. The effect on limitations due to stroke was only significant in the non-aged group. The effect on blood pressure was slightly more important in the non-aged than the aged group (P = 0.043). Conclusions Aged patients appear less willing to add a preventive drug than non-aged patients. The importance attached to various treatment characteristics does not seem to differ much among age groups.
de Vries, S.T., de Vries, F.M., Dekker, T., et al. (2015), The role of patients’ age on their preferences for choosing additional blood pressure-lowering drugs: a discrete choice experiment in patients with diabetes. PLOS ONE, 10 (10).
Community IntraVenous Antibiotic Study (CIVAS): Protocol for An Evaluation of Patient Preferences for and Cost effectiveness of Community Intravenous Antibiotic Services.
Introduction Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) is used to treat a wide range of infections, and is common practice in countries such as the USA and Australia. In the UK, national guidelines (standards of care) for OPAT services have been developed to act as a benchmark for clinical monitoring and quality. However, the availability of OPAT services in the UK is still patchy and until quite recently was available only in specialist centres. Over time, National Health Service (NHS) Trusts have developed OPAT services in response to local needs, which has resulted in different service configurations and models of care. However, there has been no robust examination comparing the cost-effectiveness of each service type, or any systematic examination of patient preferences for services on which to base any business case decision. Methods and analysis The study will use a mixed methods approach, to evaluate patient preferences for and the cost-effectiveness of OPAT service models. The study includes seven NHS Trusts located in four counties. There are five inter-related work packages: a systematic review of the published research on the safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness of intravenous antibiotic delivery services; a qualitative study to explore existing OPAT services and perceived barriers to future development; an economic model to estimate the comparative value of four different community intravenous antibiotic services; a discrete choice experiment to assess patient preferences for services, and an expert panel to agree which service models may constitute the optimal service model(s) of community intravenous antibiotics delivery. Ethics and dissemination The study has been approved by the NRES Committee, South West—Frenchay using the Proportionate Review Service (ref 13/SW/0060). The results of the study will be disseminated at national and international conferences, and in international journals.
Czoski Murray, C., Twiddy, M., Meads, D., Hess, S., et al. (2015), Community IntraVenous Antibiotic Study (CIVAS): Protocol for An Evaluation of Patient Preferences for and Cost effectiveness of Community Intravenous Antibiotic Services. BMJ Open, 5 (8).
Developing advanced route choice models for heavy goods vehicles using GPS data.
This paper presents a novel application in route choice modelling using Global Positioning System (GPS) data, focussing on heavy goods vehicles which typically make longer journeys with decisions potentially underpinned by different priorities from those used by car drivers. The scope of the study is larger than many previous ones, using the entire road network of England. Making use of the error components model put forward for route choice by Frejinger and Bierlaire (2007), the work reveals low elasticities in response to changes in travel time, reflecting the limited opportunity for avoiding specific roads on long distance journeys by heavy goods vehicles.
Hess, S., Quddus, M., Rieser, N. & Daly, A.J. (2015), Developing advanced route choice models for heavy goods vehicles using GPS data. Transportation Research Part E, 77, pp 29-44.
Reliability in the German value of time study.
The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is currently preparing the 2015 Federal Transport Investment Plan. Because this effort includes an update to the overall methodology of the ministry's cost–benefit analysis, both the value of reliability (VOR) and the value of travel time (VOT) for personal and business travel will be estimated. The VOT will replace a set of existing values, but the VOR will be estimated for the first time because they are not yet incorporated in the standard appraisal. A two-stage approach was used for data collection: first respondents reported about current trips (revealed preference), and then these responses were systematically varied to become the basis for stated preference experiments. This paper presents the findings of estimating the VOR. In the stated preference experiments the reliability of the travel modes was presented with different formats. The final model formulation differed in the definition of reliability for private and public transport. For car trips, saving travel time had more value for the respondents than reducing the variability. The calculated VOR for the mean expected unscheduled delay of public transport trips was slightly lower than the VOT; this result indicates that the reliability was less important to the respondents than the relevant travel time saving. A mean expected unscheduled delay of 1 min and 1 min of standard deviation are almost equivalent to 1 min of travel time saving (reliability ratio). Because this was the first official estimation of VOR and VOT for Germany, the values should be reconsidered and updated on a regular basis.
Ehreke, I., Hess, S., Weis, C. & Axhausen, K.W. (2015), Reliability in the German value of time study. Transportation Research Record, 2495 (1), pp 14-22.
Individual level models vs. sample level models: contrasts and mutual benefits
With a view to better capturing heterogeneity across decision makers and improving prediction of choices, there is increasing interest in estimating separate models for each person. Almost exclusively, this work has however taken place outside the field of transport research. The aim of the present paper is twofold. We first wish to give an account of the potential benefits of a greater focus on individual level estimates in transport applications. Secondly, we wish to offer further insights into the relative benefits of sample level and individual level models (ILMs) by drawing on a data set containing an unusually large number (144) of decisions on holiday travel per individual. In addition to comparing existing approaches, we also put forward the use of a novel technique which draws on the relative benefits of both sample level and ILMs by estimating ILMs in a Bayesian fashion with priors drawn from a sample level model. Our results show only limited differences between ILMs and conditionals from sample level models when working with the full set of choices. When working with more realistic sample sizes at the person level, our results suggest that ILMs can offer better performance on the estimation data but that this is a result of overfitting which can lead to inferior prediction performance. Our proposed Bayesian ILM model offers good intermediary performance. The use of best-worst data rather than simple stated choice, as is done commonly in published ILM work, does not lead to major changes to these findings.
Dumont, J., Giergiczny, M. & Hess, S. (2015), Individual level models vs. sample level models: contrasts and mutual benefits. Transportmetrica, 11 (6), pp 465-483.
Intra-respondent heterogeneity in a stated choice survey on wetland conservation in Belarus: first steps towards creating a link with uncertainty in contingent valuation.
Applications of discrete choice models in environmental valuation increasingly use a random coefficient specification, such as mixed logit, to represent taste heterogeneity. The majority of applications rely on data containing multiple observations for each respondent, where a common assumption is that tastes stay constant across choices for the same respondent. We question this assumption and make use of a model developed in the transport field which allows tastes to vary over choices for each consumer in addition to variation across consumers. An empirical analysis making use of a stated choice dataset for wetland conservation in Belarus shows that superior performance is obtained by allowing jointly for the two types of heterogeneity and that recovery of these intra-respondent variations is not possible using standard approaches, such as allowing for scale heterogeneity across tasks. We show also that intra-respondent heterogeneity can be especially high for attributes which respondents are unfamiliar with, and that a failure to account for it can substantially affect welfare estimates. We interpret this as an indication that this heterogeneity relates primarily to uncertainty. Finally, we offer initial insights into the relationship between intra-respondent heterogeneity and findings on uncertainty in a contingent valuation context.
Hess, S. & Giergiczny, M. (2015), Intra-respondent heterogeneity in a stated choice survey on wetland conservation in Belarus: first steps towards creating a link with uncertainty in contingent valuation. Environmental & Resource Economics, 60 (3), pp 327-347.
Incorporating environmental attitudes in discrete choice models: an exploration of the utility of the awareness of consequences scale.
Environmental economists are increasingly interested in better understanding how people cognitively organise their beliefs and attitudes towards environmental change in order to identify key motives and barriers that stimulate or prevent action. In this paper, we explore the utility of a commonly used psychometric scale, the awareness of consequences (AC) scale, in order to better understand stated choices. The main contribution of the paper is that it provides a novel approach to incorporate attitudinal information into discrete choice models for environmental valuation: firstly, environmental attitudes are incorporated using a reinterpretation of the classical AC scale recently proposed by Ryan and Spash (2012); and, secondly, attitudinal data is incorporated as latent variables under a hybrid choice modelling framework. This novel approach is applied to data from a survey conducted in the Basque Country (Spain) in 2008 aimed at valuing land-use policies in a Natura 2000 Network site. The results are relevant to policy-making because choice models that are able to accommodate underlying environmental attitudes may help in designing more effective environmental policies.
Hoyos, D., Mariel, P. & Hess, S. (2015), Incorporating environmental attitudes in discrete choice models: an exploration of the utility of the awareness of consequences scale. Science of the Total Environment, 505, pp 1100-1111.
Improving value transfer through socio-economic adjustments in a multicountry choice experiment of water conservation alternatives.
This study tests the transferability of the nonmarket values of water conservation for domestic and environmental purposes across three south European countries and Australia applying a common choice experiment design. Different approaches are followed to test the transferability of the estimated values, aiming to minimise transfer errors for use in policy analysis, comparing both single‐ and multicountry transfers, with and without socio‐economic adjustments. Within Europe, significant differences are found between implicit prices for environmental water use, but not for domestic water use. In the Australian case study, alleviating restrictions on domestic water use has no significant value. Pooling the three European samples improves the transferability of the environmental flow values between Europe and Australia. Results show that a reduction in transfer error is achieved when controlling for unobserved and observed preference heterogeneity in the single‐ and multicountry transfers, providing additional support for the superiority of socio‐economic adjustment procedures in value transfer.
Brouwer, R., Martin-Ortega, J., Dekker, T., et al. (2015), Improving value transfer through socio-economic adjustments in a multicountry choice experiment of water conservation alternatives. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 59 (3), pp 458-478.
Heterogeneous preferences toward landscape externalities of wind turbines – combining choices and attitudes in a hybrid model.
Expanding the share of renewable energy sources might substantially increase externalities as, for example, wind turbines may disturb the landscape and negatively affect biodiversity. This paper investigates the public׳s sensitivities towards these externalities by using discrete choice experiments and shows how preferences differ across inhabitants of our study region. As a further insight into the sources for these variations, a hybrid choice model is employed in order to incorporate individuals׳ latent attitudes in the estimated model. Our latent class structure allocates individuals to classes according to underlying latent attitudes that also influence the answers to attitudinal questions. We show that these underlying attitudes are a function of a number of socio-demographic characteristics, with young people, men with low income and those living closer to turbines having a stronger pro-wind power generation attitude. The inclusion of the attitudes in the class allocation component of the latent class model leads to a richer picture of people׳s valuations, revealing, for example, antagonistic preferences of two distinct groups of respondents, i.e. advocates and opponents of wind power generation.
Mariel, P., Meyerhoff, J. & Hess, S. (2015), Heterogeneous preferences toward landscape externalities of wind turbines – combining choices and attitudes in a hybrid model. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 41, pp 647-657.
Re-estimating UK appraisal values for non-work travel time savings using random coefficient logit model.
The official appraisal values of travel time savings (VTTS) for non-work trips in UK were estimated by basic discrete choice model on stated choice data collected over 20 years ago. This choice model developed by Bates and Whalen (2001) was specified to address some long-standing issues in the field of VTTS valuation including the sign and size of VTTS while allowing continuous interactions between VTTS and journey covariates. With respect to the size issue, it was found that a “tapering” function, whereby time changes are increasingly discounted, could best explain the lower unit utility observed for small time savings (STS). While this set of non-work VTTS is still being used for transport appraisal in UK, the field of discrete choice modelling has evolved significantly brought by a leap of computing power and improved simulation techniques. Notably, advanced model such as mixed multinomial logit (MMNL) has been widely used to facilitate more realistic travel behavioural modelling by explaining random taste heterogeneity across respondents, which cannot be achieved in a deterministic manner. Also, techniques in specifying such model for VTTS valuation are well established by researchers nowadays. The key objective of this research was then to apply the MMNL model and re-estimate the current UK VTTS within a random coefficient logit framework. Alongside the theoretical discussions, this paper presents a synthesis of empirical evidence to support an updated appraisal value for non-work travel time savings in UK. Some key findings from this paper include a much higher mean value for the VTTS and the significantly reduced “perception effect” for the STS. In particular, this research found that MMNL model substantially reduces the “tapering” parameter of the discounting function for STS such that the “perception effect” of the VTTS becomes minimal. This finding suggests that travel benefits due to STS should be included for transport appraisal and it challenges some appraisal frameworks for countries like Germany where VTTS are discounted or even completely ignored for STS.
Tjiong, J. (2015), Re-estimating UK appraisal values for non-work travel time savings using random coefficient logit model. Transportation Research Procedia, 8, pp 50-61.