Incorporating Social Interaction Effects into a Travel Mode Choice Behavior Model

In central business district, the conditions caused by a lot of car travel have resulted in the severe negative effect upon passing on sidewalks, environment of the city, and traffic on roads. The local governments have implemented many related strategies in order to solve these problems. However, the car travel problem cannot be solved sufficiently. The reason is that many types of travel behavior including travel mode choice involve social interaction effect, leading society to deadlock in inferior equilibrium state (social dilemma). The previous travel behavior models, used to be bases for policy evaluation, assumed that individual behavior is independent of others and therefore it resulted in the constrained performances. In view of the above, this study designates the CBD of Dalian City as the study area where the data are collected to build the travel mode choice behavior model into which social interaction effect is incorporated.