Stated Preference Choice Research Articles

Urban Flood Problems in Dhaka, Bangladesh: Slum Residents’ Choices for Relocation to Flood-Free Areas

This article applies a stated preference choice model to assess trade-offs that residents of two squatter settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh might consider if they were given choices for relocation to flood-free areas. The respondents were asked to choose repeatedly from a set of choice cards, which displayed different configurations of financial incentives for relocation, such as free or inexpensive land, loans or nonrepayable grants, and provisions for temporary or permanent employment opportunities. The survey results indicated that despite extensive experience with flood problems, many residents of Mirpur and Vasantek found that certain configurations of economic incentives were not attractive enough for them to relocate to flood-free areas. At the same time, they would prefer a reduction in the risk of flooding at their current location. The economic incentives that would best assist in increasing voluntary relocation of residents from their current locations included free land, nonrepayable grants (Taka 20,000), and long-term employment opportunities. Further, differences in geographic location (i.e., Mirpur vs. Vasantek), income levels, and membership in neighborhood communities were linked with the tendency of residents to stay at their current location.

Understanding Anglers’ Preferences for Fishing Tournament Characteristics and Policies

Saltwater fishing tournaments in the United States are generally not regulated nor are there different fishing regulations for tournament and nontournament anglers. Although much is known about those who participate in fishing tournaments in terms of their fishing motivations, attitudes, and characteristics, much less is known at the angler population level regarding their preferences for tournament opportunities. Using a stated preference choice model with hypothetical scenarios to simulate participation choices and understand preferences, study objectives were to identify angler preferences for various types of tournament fishing "products." Four tournament policy characteristics were investigated: promotion of catch and release, bait restrictions, whether a percentage of the tournament entrance fee should go to support fishery management activities, and whether a tournament should be a nonprofit or profit-making venture. Three expectation attributes were inserted: tournament size, trip cost per day, and whether a tournament is family friendly. We sent seven different versions of the mail questionnaire to 1,633 anglers. Of 795 returns, 648 were used for estimating conditional logit models. Analysis indicated that a scenario with no management interventions was not most preferred. Anglers most preferred a conservation-oriented option that introduced additional management measures. Overall, scenarios with management interventions were more favored than the status quo situation (with no management interventions). Although respondents showed reluctance to adopt other management-related options, results generally indicated they were increasingly concerned with sustainability of fish stocks and potential conflicts between tournament and nontournament users and preferred tournament products that reflect these concerns.

Using Recreation Specialization to Understand Multi-Attribute Management PReferences

Recreation specialization group differences in support for multi-attribute management restrictions using a stated preference choice approach were tested. A fractional factorial design produced 80 choice sets of paired trip comparisons. A three dimensional recreation specialization model (i.e., behavior, skill and knowledge, and commitment) was used to segment groups. As expected, advanced anglers were less interested in relaxing the more restrictive harvest restrictions currently in place that produce the fishing quality they enjoyed. Casual anglers showed a strong preference for catching more fish by relaxing current harvest restrictions. Each specialization group showed a notably different pattern of preference.

What You Don’t Know Might Hurt You: Some Unresolved Issues in the Design and Analysis of Discrete Choice Experiments

The papers and comments in this issue focus on four broad areas related to understanding and modeling choices: (1) The use of laboratory experiments to improve valuation methods; (2) The design of stated preference choice set and choice occasions; (3) Latent class models as means of identifying and accommodating preference heterogeneity; and (4) Accommodating uncertainty about the “true” model, modeling ranking and rating tasks and pooling data sources. In what follows I offer some comments on each area, and briefly discuss several unresolved issues associated with each area, closing with some comments about future research opportunities.

Analysing Demand for Suburban Trips: A Mixed RP/SP Model with Latent Variables and Interaction Effects

We analyse mode choice behaviour for suburban trips in the Grand Canary island using mixed revealed preference (RP)/stated preference (SP) information. The SP choice experiment allowed for interactions among the main policy variables: travel cost, travel time and frequency, and also to test the influence of latent variables such as comfort. It also led to discuss additional requirements on the size and sign of the estimated model parameters, to assess model quality when interactions are present. The RP survey produced data on actual trip behaviour and was used to adapt the SP choice experiment. During the specification searches we detected the presence of income effect and were able to derive willingness-to-pay measures, such as the subjective value of time, which varied among individuals. We also studied the systematic heterogeneity in individual tastes through the specification of models allowing for interactions between level-of-service and socio-economic variables. We concluded examining the sensitivity of travellers’ behaviour to various policy scenarios. In particular, it seems that contrary to political opinion, in a crowded island policies penalising the use of the private car seem to have a far greater impact in terms of bus patronage than policies implying direct improvements to the public transport service.

Recent Progress on Endogeneity in Choice Modeling

We describe recent progress in several areas related to endogeneity, including: choice set formation and attention to attributes; interactions among decision-makers; respondents' strategic behavior in answering stated preference choices; models of multiple discrete/continuous choice; distributions of willingness-to-pay; and methods for handling traditionally endogenous explanatory variables.

A Stated Preference Choice Approach to Understanding Angler Preferences for Management Options

This study investigated the choices anglers make between hypothetical fishing trips as defined by harvest regulations, fishing expectations, and trip costs and ranking the various management scenarios being considered. A fractional factorial design required generation of 80 choice sets. A conditional logit model was used to estimate the preference model. All estimated coefficients of attributes had expected signs except for the “retain more fish greater than the maximum size limit” variable. Anglers did not favor regulations allowing retention of more fish above the current bag limit. The status quo scenario (with most conservative harvest restrictions) was least preferred, as expected. The most liberal harvest restriction scenario was most preferred. When angler expectations were changed, anglers wanted more stringent management that closely resembled the status quo option. Anglers were willing to relax certain rules and seemed to be choosing conservation of fishery resources over exploitation. Funding support for this research by the Coastal Fisheries Division, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station was much appreciated. The authors thank the following individuals who provided important advice and review comments at various stages of the research: Oystein Aas (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research), Dan Fesenmaier (Temple University), Kirk Gillis (Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation), Robert Hearne (North Dakota State University), Richard Woodward (Texas A&M University), and the two anonymous reviewers of this article.

Examining policy preferences of recreationists: A case of a fisheries management plan

We showcase a stated preference choice modelling approach that is ideally suited to provide information about recreationists’ preferences for different recreational management plans. In particular, we employ a stated preference choice model to examine anglers’ preferences for walleye management plans in eastern Ontario, Canada. This choice model approach with its emphasis on trade‐offs allows us to assess whether support for walleye regulations is affected by the expected catch and size of walleye that would likely be produced by the regulations. We also examine differences in angling preferences for regulations through a latent‐class model that is jointly estimated with the choice model. The results suggest that anglers do make trade‐offs among regulations and expected outcomes and that anglers do have different preferences for regulations and expected outcomes.

Optimal stated preference choice experiments when all choice sets contain a specific option

Stated preference choice experiments are routinely used in many areas from marketing to medicine. While results on the optimal choice sets to present for the forced choice setting have been determined in a variety of situations, no results have appeared to date on the optimal choice sets to use when either all choice sets are to contain a common base alternative or when all choice sets contain a “none of these” option. These problems are considered in this paper.

'Irrational' stated preferences: a quantitative and qualitative investigation.

Individuals' rationality has been a key issue long debated in Economics. While normative theories establish the way 'rational' consumers should behave, many empirical studies have documented numerous systematic violations of normative principles. This has led some to question the validity of classic economic models as an adequate approximation of individuals' real decision-making. This paper aims to shed more light on this debate. A stated preference choice experiment was set up to test rational choice properties. Attention was given to the extent to which satisfaction of such tests is related to both the complexity of the design, and subject characteristics. Quantitative and qualitative methods are applied. The majority of respondents passed the rationality tests. Satisfaction of the tests was sensitive to normatively irrelevant factors such as the complexity of the task and demographic characteristics. A significant proportion of those individuals who 'failed' seem to have reformulated the experiment in some way in their mental process. Implications for the design and analyses of future DCEs are discussed.

Accommodating Heterogeneity and Heteroscedasticity in Intercity Travel Mode Choice Model: Formulation and Application to HoNam, South Korea, High-Speed Rail Demand Analysis

Multinomial logit models and nested logit models are limited in that they cannot accommodate unobserved variations in travelers' taste and they do not have flexible substitution patterns among alternatives because of the independence of irrelevant alternatives property. Taking this background into account, traffic demand analysts have recently used the mixed logit model in many studies. Unfortunately, most of the studies in the literature for joint analysis of revealed-preference (RP) and stated-preference (SP) data could not simultaneously resolve the two limitations just mentioned. The mixed logit framework is used to formulate an intercity travel mode choice model for joint RP-SP analysis that accommodates the following behavioral considerations: ( a) observed and unobserved heterogeneity across individuals in response to level-of-service (LOS) factors, ( b) heteroscedasticity across alternatives, and ( c) scale differences between the RP and SP choice contexts. The mixed logit formulation is estimated with the maximum simulated likelihood method that employs quasi-random Halton draws. The formulation is applied to examine the travel behavior responses of users of the HoNam, South Korea, high-speed rail to changes in travel conditions. The empirical results show that there is a significant heteroscedasticity across alternatives and a significant heterogeneity in response to LOS attributes based on both observed and unobserved individual characteristics. There is an improvement in the data-fit statistics when one introduces heterogeneity and heteroscedasticity. These results highlight the need to include heterogeneity and heteroscedasticity within the context of intercity travel mode choice modeling to assist policy decision making.

A non-compensatory choice model incorporating attribute cutoffs

This research proposes an extension to the traditional compensatory utility maximization framework which has guided most theoretical and statistical work in choice modeling applications, including those in transportation demand estimation work. Attribute cutoffs are incorporated into the decision problem formulation; it is then argued on extant empirical evidence that individuals may view these constraints as “soft”. This leads to the formulation of a penalized utility function that allows for constraint violation, but at a cost to the overall evaluation of the good. The proposed model is able to represent fully compensatory, conjunctive and disjunctive choice strategies, as well as combinations thereof. The properties of the proposed theoretical model are examined and discussed. From the theoretical framework, statistical models of choice behavior are easily derived; in their simplest forms, these models can be estimated using existing software. A Stated Preference choice experiment is analyzed using the proposed model, which is found to be highly consistent with observed choices and superior to a structural two-stage choice set formation model.

Estimating lost amenity due to landfill waste disposal

The increasing quantities of waste produced by society have implications not only for waste management but also for the social and environmental impacts that these activities generate. This paper examines the impacts that a well-established United Kingdom (UK) landfill site has on the people who live around it and uses a stated preference choice experiment to estimate the magnitude of these impacts in monetary terms. It is found that many residents experience minimal impacts having learnt to live with the landfill site. Willingness to pay for reducing impacts is relatively low and any reduction in landfill operations is likely to have little effect on the amenity of local people.

Incentive Tolls for Congestion Management: A Planning Tool for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

A congestion pricing planning model was developed for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The model is designed to evaluate possible incentive tolls for their effects on congestion delays at the six bridges and tunnels the authority operates between New Jersey and New York. The study used a stated preference survey administered to bridge and tunnel users, econometric choice models, and plaza volume-delay relationships as a basis for simulating the effects of changes in toll structure. The survey identified characteristics of trips, feasible alternatives for the trips, and the trip makers. A stated preference choice exercise was included to reveal trade-offs among toll, plaza delay, facility choice, and time period when the crossing would be made. Responses to the exercise were combined with other survey data, and econometric models of choice were estimated. The models associate the probability of travel choices with the conditions faced at the alternatives. The policy evaluation planning model combined choice model results, survey responses from individual respondents, and data on facility conditions, volumes, and capacities. As input it accepts a user-specified menu of tolls and discounts, potentially varying both by hour and by facility. As output it predicts automobile volumes, average delays, total delays, and toll revenue by hour and facility. The model is constructed to achieve equilibrium among tolls, delays, and volumes. Application of the model indicates considerable potential for reducing plaza delays.

Investigating Effect of Advanced Traveler Information on Commuter Tendency To Use Transit

A study of the effects of advanced transit information on commuter propensity to use transit is described. A computer-aided telephone interview was designed and conducted in Sacramento and San Jose, California. The most important information items that nontransit users seek about the transit services available to them is investigated. Using a customized stated preference choice sets, the likelihood that the commuters will use transit is explored. Commuter perceptions of transit and transit user satisfaction with the information currently available to them are studied. The results indicated that about 38 percent of the respondents who currently do not use transit might consider transit if the appropriate information is available. Analyses using the stated-preference technique and targeting this group of respondents indicated a promising effect of transit information systems in encouraging transit ridership if the desired information is provided. Using binary logit and ordered probit modeling produced resul...

Investigating Effect of Advanced Traveler Information on Commuter Tendency to Use Transit

A study of the effects of advanced transit information on commuter propensity to use transit is described. A computer-aided telephone interview was designed and conducted in Sacramento and San Jose, California. The most important information items that nontransit users seek about the transit services available to them is investigated. Using a customized stated preference choice sets, the likelihood that the commuters will use transit is explored. Commuter perceptions of transit and transit user satisfaction with the information currently available to them are studied. The results indicated that about 38 percent of the respondents who currently do not use transit might consider transit if the appropriate information is available. Analyses using the stated-preference technique and targeting this group of respondents indicated a promising effect of transit information systems in encouraging transit ridership if the desired information is provided. Using binary logit and ordered pro-bit modeling produced results that show the significant effect of several commute and socioeconomic characteristics (such as travel time, car-pooling, and age) on the propensity of using transit.

On the semantic scale problem in stated preference rating experiments

Stated preference (SP) rating experiments are easy to design and conduct. Furthermore, they constitute a generalisation of SP choice experiments in terms of the information about preferences that can be achieved. However, its results are sensitive to the numerical values assigned by the analyst to the semantic scale used by individuals to express their preferences. We consider this problem in depth using a variety of statistical techniques, including ordinal probit and a novel optimal scale linear regression approach.

Cross-task validity comparisons of stated preference choice models

This paper uses a statistical test developed by Horowitz and Louviere (1993) to compare the parameters of several logit models estimated from different preference measures. This test shows that all models produce estimates of attribute effects that are equivalent up to a rescaling. Furthermore, models based on stated next purchase, the outcome of a purchase experiment, and a binary analysis of consideration set data produce equivalent estimates of all parameters.

Stated preference methods and travel demand forecasting: An examination of the scale factor problem

Stated Preference choice models may have incorrect scale properties, because their coefficients incorporate the influence of factors which do not affect actual behaviour, and this paper examines the consequences of this scale factor problem for demand forecasting. Empirical evidence is presented which suggests that the scale factor problem is not serious and the results are generalised to consider the consequences of the scale factor problem in situations other than those prevailing in the empirical example. The paper also examines the predictive performance of three procedures for forecasting changes to an existing demand in the light of the scale factor problem. This indicates that reliance should not be placed on the incremental logit model and that a simple procedure which amends a standard logit model forecast in the light of its performance in explaining the observed initial demand is generally preferred to unadjusted logit model forecasts.