Gordon Ewing

Assessing Consumer Preferences for Clean-Fuel Vehicles: A Discrete Choice Experiment

The authors assess preferences for clean-fuel vehicles (CFVs) versus the conventional vehicle using a discrete choice experiment. The results show that though consumers value environmental impact, vehicle performance characteristics are critical to choice. The authors find that regulation is not sufficient to create a market for CFVs, and they identify three market segments to which CFVs should be distinctly positioned and targeted.

Car fuel-type choice under travel demand management and economic incentives

Abstract Future levels of vehicle air pollution in urban areas will depend on the proportion of new car buyers who opt for less polluting vehicles, as these appear on the market. This paper examines the factors likely to influence the demand for lower emission and zero emission vehicles. Using a discrete choice experiment, suburban driver commuters choose between three types of vehicle, one conventional, one fuel-efficient and one electric. Each is characterized by varying vehicle cost and performance measures, range and refueling rates, and commuting costs and times. The latter are manipulated to determine how their use as economic instruments might influence vehicle choice. All cost and time variables are expressed as ratios of the respondent’s current situation. Parameters of a multinomial discrete choice model are used in a choice simulator to estimate the average choice probability of each type of vehicle under different scenarios reflecting possible future relative vehicle prices and performance levels as well as differential commuting costs and times based on policies aimed at encouraging the purchase of cleaner vehicles. The evidence is that the latter economic instruments will have modest effects on vehicle choice. By contrast there would be a large shift of demand to cleaner and zero-emission vehicles provided their cost and performance came within an acceptable range of conventional vehicles.

A model of tourist choices of hypothetical Caribbean destinations.

Abstract An experimental method is described for analyzing the preferences of winter beach vacationers for various destination attributes. Choice alternatives are created in a fractional factorial design consisting of 10 variables, each of which is defined on three levels. The variables describe characteristics of the accommodation, the distance of relevant tourist facilities from the accommodation and price. A second design combines five alternatives at a time into choice sets and labels each alternative as being situated on one of five islands (Barbados, Cuba, Jamaica, Martinique, and St. Vincent). Of all attributes considered, price and distance to beach constitute the most important variables. In addition, results from the experiments can be used to estimate the demand for any destination scenario within the domain of attributes. Hence, the model can be valuable for destination planning and marketing.

Altruistic, Egoistic, and Normative Effects on Curbside Recycling

How altruistic, normative, and egoistic factors affect households’ participation in curbside recycling is shown to depend on how participation is measured. If expressed as whether a household participated, the importance of two normative factors (the expectations of household members and of friends and neighbors), an altruistic factor (that recycling helps protect the environment), and an egoistic factor (that recycling is inconvenient) appears similar. However, the altruistic factor has the greatest impact and the egoistic factor the least because of strong beliefs in curbside recycling’s environmental benefit and weak beliefs in its inconvenience. However, when measured by the proportion of different kinds of material a household recycles, the dominant influences are the expectations of other household members and inconvenience. The significance of egoistic concerns, namely, inconvenience and cost, is confirmed by negative attitudes toward user fees for garbage collection and toward drop-off depots as alternatives to curbside pickup.

Progress and problems in the development of recreational trip generation and trip distribution models

Continuing problems in the development of recreational spatial interaction models are discussed. The paper begins by considering the relative behavioral relevance to recreational travel behavior of the unconstrained gravity model, the origin‐constrained gravity model, and a simultaneous trip generation and trip distribution model. It elaborates on the behavioral rationale for the supply‐generated participation effect hypothesized in the latter model. A detailed discussion ensues of modeling problems related to the travel cost/distance and the attractiveness components of recreational trip distribution models. Particular topics covered are the continued inability of models to estimate the separate effects of various elements of travel cost and the evidence that, in addition to a distance deterrence effect, there is a nearest opportunity effect, an intervening opportunities effect, and perceptual barrier effects on recreational travel flows. A review of recent developments in estimating destination attracti...

Models of recreational trip distribution

Baxter M. J. and Ewing G. (1981) Models of recreational trip distribution, Reg. Studies 15, 327–344. Singly constrained gravity models for recreational trip distribution are investigated with different subsets of data, measures of distance travelled, deterrence functions and levels of zonal aggregation. Estimates, and their interpretation, exhibit some consistency for the most disaggregate system, however the data is treated; for more aggregated systems there is much variation in the results obtained. Models that allow for the effect of barriers to travel are developed, and a multi-stop model incorporating features peculiar to recreational trips is proposed and calibrated. Some unresolved problems associated with the use of this model are indicated.

Shipper Preferences Suggest Strong Mistrust of Rail: Results from Stated Preference Carrier Choice Survey for Quebec City-Windsor Corridor in Canada

The Quebec City–Windsor corridor is the busiest and most important trade and transportation corridor in Canada. The transportation sector is the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Governments around the world, including Canadas, are considering increasing mode share by rail as a way of reducing transportation emissions. To understand whether freight mode shift is a realistic means of reducing transportation emissions, an analytical model is needed that can predict the effect of government policy on mode split. This paper presents the findings of the first such model developed for the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The model itself is a stated preference carrier choice model of shippers in this busy route. The model was developed by using the results of a stated preference survey undertaken in fall 2005. The survey was designed explicitly to evaluate shipper preferences for the carriage of intercity consignments, particularly their preferences for carriers that contract the services of rail companies to carry these shipments via rail. The results of the study (a) show that shippers are mistrustful of using rail to move their consignments and (b) suggest that increasing rails share of freight transport faces tremendous challenges.

Gender-Based Analysis of Work Trip Mode Choice of Commuters in Suburban Montreal, Canada, with Stated Preference Data

Transportation literature suggests that men and women differ in their commuting patterns and in their propensity to switch between travel options. In North America, it is expected that women will have an increasing impact on travel demand. As such, differences in female responses to travel demand management strategies are likely to become increasingly important as governments try to curtail travel demand. This paper uses a 1994 stated preference survey of suburban commuters in Montreal, Canada, to determine whether there is evidence for differences between men and women in the factors that affect work trip choices, to quantify those differences, and to suggest what the differences imply for travel demand management in the future in Montreal. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows. First, women and men should be modeled separately for work trip mode choice. Second, three main differences appear from the econometric models: women are less likely to choose public transit than men; women are more l...

Revealed and stated preference analysis of ski resort attractiveness

The paper compares a revealed and stated preference approach for estimating the site attractiveness of Vermont ski resorts to weekend skiers. Unexpected bias in attractiveness estimates, seemingly caused by the geometry of origins and destinations, is discovered when the revealed preference approach is used. The attractiveness scales of resorts, which were estimated using separate metric (Thurstone) and nonmetric (nonmetric scaling) models of preference, are shown to be very similar despite the different assumptions of the two models. Eighty‐six percent of variance in the attractiveness estimates of resorts is explained by only two variables, mean perceived length of slopes and mean perceived level of crowding. A multidimensional scaling analysis of a matrix showing the mean cognitive similarity of each pair of 23 resorts reveals that the resultant two‐dimensional cognitive map of the resorts can be largely characterized by the same two attributes, slope length and crowding, that explain the preference‐ba...

Recreational day trips in east central Scotland

Abstract The paper describes the notable geographical features found in the day‐trip travel pattern of a sample of car‐owning respondents in East Central Scotland. The patterns are also used to infer the relative attractiveness to day‐trippers of thirty zones in the study area, and provide evidence of various deterrents to travel in addition to simple road distance.