UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Studies

The proposed model of travel choice behavior is based upon an assupmtion that individuals compare their choice alternatives on a series of attributes ordered in terms of importance; they eliminate from consideration :those alternatives which do not meet their expectation on one or more of the characteristics. The process is repeated with adjusted levels of expectation until only one alternative remains. The model thus incorporates a number of psycho logical decision axioms which have seldom been applied in models aimed at providing transportation planners with useful information from consumer survey data. 

Estimates of parameters defining distributions of expectation levels in a population of travelers are generated using a nonlinear optimization technique. The technique is demonstrated to provide estimates which replicate well the choices of travelers in two different contexts: choice of hypothetical concepts of small urban vehicles and choice of destination for shopping trips within an urban area.