Modelling travelers’ appraisal of ridepooling service characteristics with a discrete choice experiment

Abstract

Background: Ridepooling services have been predicted a bright future since they promise a flexible and usercentered mobility service. However, there is a research gap in examining the travelers' perception of ridepooling service characteristics since findings concerning fixed-scheduled public transport are hardly transferable. Methods: In order to shed some light on the human factors of ridepooling services a Discrete Choice Experiment (N = 410) was performed to identify travelers' preferences concerning ridepooling's service features. The study thereby focusses on the effect of trip purpose on the appraisal of the service attributes. Based on a literature review and a focus group six attributes of the operational concept were determined: fare, walking distance to the pickup point, time of booking in advance, shift of departure time, travel time and information. Results: The results underline that all of the six attributes significantly affected choice behavior. The appraisal of the service characteristics differed depending on the presented trip purpose. The willingness to pay was calculated for each service characteristics. The results give guidance for the user-centered design and operation of ridepooling systems that meet the requirements of the prospective passengers and thus facilitate behavioral shifts towards more sustainable mobility systems.

Analyzing Urban Residents’ Appraisal of Ridepooling Service Attributes with Conjoint Analysis

“…Several research studies have addressed travelers' requirements concerning fixed-scheduled bus transport and found reliability, fare, distance of bus stop, frequency, and travel time to be recurring attributes that affected bus service quality from the passengers' perspective [17][18][19][20][21]. See [22] for a literature review on the attributes of bus services that proved important for passengers' appraisal in previous studies. Yet, findings concerning fixed-schedule bus transport are hardly transferable to ridepooling services since they are in large parts very different: they lack supply-oriented service elements, like fixed routes and stops, in favor of demand-responsive service elements, like real-time routing.…”

“…Therefore, attributes like vehicle cleanliness and stop environment were excluded. Based on the literature review, ten relevant attributes of bus public transport were identified: reliability, frequency, travel time, fare, information provision, walking time to access, number of stops, service provision hours, network coverage, and connectability [22].…”

“…Private cars were used by more than one-quarter of the respondents (26.2%) for at least five days per week. Of the respondents, 22.8% declared that the distance to the next bus stop from their home is less than 100 m (n = 54). Another 62.4% (n = 148) stated that the next bus stop was within a distance of 100 m to 500 m, and 10.1% (n = 24) had to walk more than 500 m to reach the nearest bus stop.…”

Development of a multinomial logit­model to choose a transportation mode for intercity travel

“…Study [5] uses discrete modeling to estimate international cargo flows (with distribution by the types of cargo). In [6], discrete modeling is applied to assess readiness to accept a crowdshipping service while in [7] the use of bicycles for travel (with distribution by a travel purpose).…”

Human factors of digitalized mobility forms and services

“…König and Grippenkoven [15] focus on the relevance of different service attributes for the adoption of a ridepooling service. Based on discrete choice experiments, they find that all considered attributes (fare, walking distance to the pick-up point, time of booking in advance, shift of departure time, travel time, information) significantly affected the choice of the service but that the appraisal of them differed depending on the trip purpose: In case of a doctor's appointment, people were, for instance, more sensitive to a shift of departure time, an increase of travel time and walking distance to the pick-up point than were people for a shopping trip.…”