Random utility models with implicit availability/perception of choice alternatives for the simulation of travel demand

Random utility models with implicit availability/perception of choice alternatives for the simulation of travel demand

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Article ID: iaor2003329
Country: United Kingdom
Volume: 9C
Issue: 4
Start Page Number: 249
End Page Number: 264
Publication Date: Aug 2001
Journal: Transportation Research. Part C, Emerging Technologies
Authors: ,
Abstract:

Random utility models are undoubtedly the most used models for the simulation of transport demand. These models simulate the choice of a decision-maker among a set of feasible alternatives and their operational use requires that the analyst is able to correctly specify this choice-set for each individual. Some early applications basically ignored this problem by assuming that all decision-makers chose from the same pre-specified choice-set. This assumption may be unrealistic in many practical cases and cause significant misspecification problems. The problem of choice-set simulation has been dealt within the literature following two basically different approaches: (i) simulating the perception/availability of an alternative implicitly in the choice model; (ii) simulating the choice-set generation explicitly in a separate model. The implicit approach is more convenient from an operational point of view, while the explicit one is more appealing from a theoretical point of view. In this paper, a different approach to the modeling of availability/perception of alternatives in the context of random utility model is proposed. This approach is based on the concept of intermediate degrees of availability/perception of each alternative simulated through a model (or ‘inclusion function’) which in turn is introduced in the systematic utility of standard random utility models. This model, named implicit availability/perception (IAP), may be differently specified depending on assumptions made on the joint distribution of random residuals and the way in which the average degree of availability/perception is modeled. In this paper, a possible specification of the IAP model, based on the assumption of random residual distributed as independent, identical Gumbel and with the average degree of availability/perception modeled as a binomial logit, is proposed.

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