Would You Wait? Bus Choice Behavior Analysis Considering Various Incentives

Abstract

During the peak hour, ridership is much higher, and this can lead to problems such as overcrowding for customers and vehicle bunching for the operator as dwell times increase for the lead bus. In this paper, we examined whether to avoid overcrowding people might be willing to wait for the next bus knowing there were seats and if they were offered an incentive. Three distinct types of incentive were offered, defined according to goal-framing theory. To obtain the choice data, a discrete choice experiment was developed and incorporated into an online survey that was distributed to public transport users. A binary logit model and a mixed multinomial logit model were used to investigate how different factors influence public transport users’ bus choice behavior. Results show several considerations that increase the likelihood of users agreeing to the request to wait. These include the weather being sunny/fine, not very cold, or both, the purpose being seeing a friend or shopping, longer in-vehicle time, shorter proposed bus waiting time, and the incentive. The results of the mixed multinomial logit model show variation among the respondents with regard to the incentives. We found that age, gender, work status, possession of a driver ID, and vehicle availability are significant predictors for incentive preference. In that our models target specific groups of users with tailored incentives, the results indicate how to persuade public transport users to avoid overcrowded buses.

Public Transit Itinerary Choice Analysis Considering Various Incentives

“…Based on the results from the current study (which were in line with the authors’ earlier findings [ 4 ]), the scenario attributes mainly determined whether or not the proposed itinerary was accepted, and the sociodemographic attributes determined the specific incentive the respondents chose when they accepted. Therefore, for the utility function in Equations 4 and 5, the scenario attributes were considered to be nest-specific attributes, and the sociodemographics were considered to be alternative-specific attributes.…”

“…In our scenarios, different factors were considered, including contextual information, service information on the different itineraries, as well as the incentives. Even though contextual information is not alternative-specific, it has been found to influence people’s itinerary choice in previous research ( 3 ) and is likely to influence whether people are prepared to wait for the next bus ( 4 ). We first determined the influencing factors, then conducted a pilot survey to elicit what factors might influence people, to fully consider the important factors.…”

“…Normative goals pertain to something that other people think is appropriate to do, such as objectives that will benefit society. This framework has been applied to transportation-related issues before ( 4 , 9 ), but it has not been applied to public transit itinerary choice analysis.…”

“…By including these attributes, the hypothesis was that when the environment was more comfortable (e.g., sunny or the temperature was not too cold) or the travel situation was more flexible (e.g., going shopping or off-peak hours), respondents would more easily accept the proposed itinerary. In a study of the impact of contextual information on waiting for another bus, given that the one about to arrive was crowded, when cold or if the scenario involved going to work or study, people were more likely to accept the proposed bus ( 4 ). As a result, we tested the impact of these factors on bus itinerary choice in this study.…”

“…Providing transit users with alternative public transit modes such as shared taxis could also motivate them to change their itineraries if they were seen as more desirable. Furthermore, incentives could also directly convince some people to accept a proposed itinerary, especially given multiple options that could be tailored to their preferences, encouraging people to consider the suggested alternatives ( 4 ). Since people have different preferences for such stimuli, it is important to know who is most likely to be influenced by such inducements to change and under what conditions.…”