How important is safety in making flight choices? Evidence from simple choice experiments

How Safety Risk Information and Alternative Forms of Presenting It Affect Traveler Decision Rules in International Flight Choice

“…Given that natural frequencies (e.g., one incident in the last three years) are often thought to promote understanding, an incident rate was employed, similar to previous work (see Koo, Caponecchia, and Williamson 2015, 2016). This study included the natural frequencies based on not only aircraft type incidents but also airline incidents.…”

“…There is considerable research on the various aspects of aviation safety and the aviation market (e.g., see Savage 2012 for a review). However, research on the impact of safety information on travelers’ flight choice decisions is comparatively rare (Fleischer, Tchetchik, and Toledo 2012, 2015; Koo, Caponecchia, and Williamson 2015, 2016; Lirn and Sheu 2009; Molin et al 2017), despite the increasingly information intensive nature of contemporary online flight choice tools.…”

“…As aviation safety information is not explicitly available to the traveler, as with other information available at the time of flight purchase such as price, studies examining safety issues in flight choices use stated choice methods. From these studies (Fleischer, Tchetchik, and Toledo 2012, 2015; Koo, Caponecchia, and Williamson 2015, 2016; Lirn and Sheu 2009; Molin et al 2017), we have learned that safety does influence stated flight choice and that the nature of this relationship may vary because of individual differences in tolerance for risk that can influence perception of safety. Importantly, the stated choice studies are suggestive of the presence of thresholds beyond which consumers will eliminate from choices of flights perceived as unsafe, as suggested by the very high implied willingness-to-pay (WTP) values in some segments in Koo, Caponecchia, and Williamson (2016).…”

“…For instance, there is a wealth of evidence suggesting that probabilistic information such as numerical probabilities (e.g., 0.000001%) is often misinterpreted and that people generally have problems interpreting very small numbers (e.g., Caponecchia 2009; Stone, Yates, and Parker 1994). Both Koo, Caponecchia, and Williamson (2015, 2016) and Fleischer, Tchetchik, and Toledo (2015) call for further research on the most effective formats for provision of safety information. This study uses a variety of ways of presenting safety information, including those that are known to produce more errors and misinterpretations (numerical probabilities and fractions) versus the ones that have been used in previous studies (natural frequencies such as incident numbers) and those that are often used in the public and media (star-ratings and words).…”

An empirical assessment of willingness to accept “low-cost” air transport services: Evidence from the Middle East

“…Review of extant literature reveals that several factors in terms of fare (Koo, Caponecchia and Williamson, 2018), air travel service quality (Adeola and Adebiyi, 2014), frequent flyer program (Dennett et al, 2000), airline image (Connor and Davidson, 1997), flight frequency (Hess and Polak, 2006), perceived flight safety (Fleischer, Tchetchik and Toledo, 2015;Koo, et al, 2015; and booking method (Ong and Tang, 2010) are among important factors influencing passengers' choice of an airline. Particularly, Jung and Yoo (2014) studied passengers' choice of an airline in a domestic short-haul travel and found that fare, access time and journey time are significant predictors of passengers' choice in Korea.…”