Willingness-to-Pay and Preference Heterogeneity for Rural Bus Attributes
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 1
Abstract
This paper presents estimations of willingness-to-pay (WTP) values in the context of rural bus service in a developing country. Using stated choice data collected from rural bus users, WTP values are estimated by developing standard multinomial logit model (MNL) and three different random parameter logit (RPL) models: One with independent or uncorrelated responses, another taking into account the correlations among responses, and the other allowing heterogeneity around the mean of in-vehicle travel time. While developing the RPL models, successful application of the sparsely used constrained triangular distribution is demonstrated. WTP values are estimated separately for commuting and noncommuting trips. Higher WTP values for travel time are observed for commuting trips, while for noncommuting trips higher WTP values are found for qualitative attribute. Preference heterogeneity associated with the mean is investigated, and the “travel distance” is found to have a statistically significant decomposition effect on the mean of in-vehicle travel time for commuting trips. The traditional MNL model, in general, is found to underestimate the WTP values as compared to RPL models.
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Acknowledgments
The work presented in the paper is based on a research project sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Suggestions from John Rose (ITLS, Sydney) are gratefully acknowledged. The writers express their sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 133 • Issue 1 • January 2007
Pages: 62 - 69
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Sep 6, 2005
Accepted: Jun 7, 2006
Published online: Jan 1, 2007
Published in print: Jan 2007
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