Modelling travel choice behavior capturing principles of psychophysics

Despite the popularity of models of fully rational behavior, several studies have formulated models of bounded rational behavior and presented evidence of the potential of such models. A recent examples are the random regret-minimizing models which capture regret-aversion (reference-dependent) behavior. Central to these model is the comparison of choice alternatives on an attribute-by-attribute basis. Psycho-physical researches have shown that i) individuals have different types of reference-dependent behavior, ii) the perception of attribute differences tend to be non-linear, and iii) they do not perceive or ignore the small difference. Assuming similar laws apply to the perception of travel attribute differences, this study aims to incorporate psycho-physical rules into travel behavior modeling. On the basis of the introduction of psycho-physical rules and a proposed integrated framework in travel behavior modeling, the authors develop a novel series of regret-rejoice choice model and empirically test their ability to reproduce choice data. Results based on the latent class model indicate that travelers in different class have heterogeneous psycho-physical perceptions. Therefore, capturing the psycho-physical relationships in models of travel demand seems a critical decision to better predict travelers’ behavior.