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Theoretical assumptions for explaining travel behaviour changes are frequently limited to disciplinary boundaries. By combining the occurrence of key events with attitudinal dimensions in the ROA model and, furthermore, drawing on the model of cognitive dissonance, an integrated theoretical framework is presented.

We review several streams of research in different fields of travel behaviour research and develop a theoretical framework for guiding future empirical work on travel behaviour research.

The theoretical framework proposes that due to a key event a window of opportunity opens for behavioural change and adaptation processes of attitudes and behaviour.

Further empirical research will have to show the validity and usefulness of the theoretical framework developed. A panel data analysis is proposed with attitudinal variables before and after a certain key event.

This study was performed to examine the relationship between dynamic traffic information and driver's route choice behavior when non-recurrent events cause traffic jams. To enhance the effectiveness and applicability of the information system as a traffic control measure, it is important to investigate the influence of the software aspects of a dynamic traffic information system; these software aspects include information content and the timing of information delivery. This study was undertaken to investigate whether providing drivers with dynamic traffic information might relieve traffic jams and improve travel time reliability. A questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain data regarding the respondents' attitudes to detours and their stated preference (SP) of route choice behavior. These data are used to analyze the characteristics of drivers who show negative and positive attitudes to detours, including driver information usage and knowledge about the alternative routes. Also, this study analyzes the relation between the way to provide drivers with information and driver's decision-making on route using the SP data. Especially, the analytical attentions are paid to the influences of both timing and contents of information provided upon the respondent' route choices.

Purpose – To provide a behavioural perspective on the relationship between transport and climate change.

Methodology/approach – The factors influencing travel behaviour and the elements critical to behaviour formation are reviewed. The importance of behaviour change measures to reduce the impact of transport on climate change, and the application of behaviour change measures to increase the sustainability of transport, are examined.

Findings – There have been a range of travel behaviour measures implemented, such as individualised marketing programmes and travel plans, which have demonstrated some behavioural change impacts, in turn affecting climate change emissions, although they tend to be localised and small-scale.

Social implications – There is a real challenge to encourage individuals within society to exhibit more sustainable travel behaviour.

Originality/value – A range of behavioural issues still need to be resolved in terms of the relationship between transport and climate change, including a need to influence attitudes, to bridge the gaps between attitudes and both behaviour and intention, to make an impact at points of transition for individuals, to use cognitive dissonance as a way of harnessing social norms, and to understand more fully social pressure and group influence.

Choice under risk has a large stochastic (unpredictable) component. This chapter examines five stochastic models for binary discrete choice under risk and how they combine with “structural” theories of choice under risk. Stochastic models are substantive theoretical hypotheses that are frequently testable in and of themselves, and also identifying restrictions for hypothesis tests, estimation and prediction. Econometric comparisons suggest that for the purpose of prediction (as opposed to explanation), choices of stochastic models may be far more consequential than choices of structures such as expected utility or rank-dependent utility.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the importance of individual social capital characteristics in determining wages, both directly through their valuation by employers and indirectly through their impact on individual occupational choice. We find that a person’s level of sociability and care for others works through both channels to explain wage differences between social and nonsocial occupations. Additionally, expected wages in each occupation type are found to be at least as important as a person’s level of social capital in choosing a social occupation. We make use of restricted 2000 Decennial Census and 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey.

The choice overload (CO) phenomenon, whereby having many options leads to negative consequences, has been studied widely in psychology and marketing. However, empirical evidence of CO in the tourism context is limited, even though people often encounter numerous choices (e.g., vacation destinations, airfares, hotels, tours) at different stages when planning their holidays. Investigating CO in tourism and hospitality is important because (online) travel advisors are providing tourists with numerous choices, yet they do not know whether or not these decision makers are content after choosing from these large choice sets. This chapter proposes to review and apply insights garnered from the CO literature to tourism research. Accordingly, the chapter proposes five groups of solutions for tourists and travel advisors to avoid CO effects: reducing decision task difficulty, reducing choice-set complexity, reducing preference uncertainty, focusing on decision goals rather than the means to achieve those goals, and adopting appropriate decision-making styles.

We demonstrate in a laboratory experiment that the effectiveness of performance-contingent incentives is inversely related to risk-aversion levels. For about 16.5% of participants, performance fails to improve under performance-pay, and the probability of such failure increases with risk-aversion. This phenomenon works in part through the reduced effort level of more risk-averse individuals when effort level is positively correlated with risk exposure. It is also associated with higher self-reported levels of stress by more risk-averse people working under performance-contingent pay. We find no evidence of such stress causing decrements in the quality of effort affecting performance after controlling for effort level. However, controlling for effort, more risk-averse participants perform better under a fixed salary, leaving less room for improvement under performance-pay.

The author presents new estimates of the probability weighting functions found in rank-dependent theories of choice under risk. These estimates are unusual in two senses. First, they are free of functional form assumptions about both utility and weighting functions, and they are entirely based on binary discrete choices and not on matching or valuation tasks, though they depend on assumptions concerning the nature of probabilistic choice under risk. Second, estimated weighting functions contradict widely held priors of an inverse-s shape with fixed point well in the interior of the (0,1) interval: Instead the author usually finds populations dominated by “optimists” who uniformly overweight best outcomes in risky options. The choice pairs used here mostly do not provoke similarity-based simplifications. In a third experiment, the author shows that the presence of choice pairs that provoke similarity-based computational shortcuts does indeed flatten estimated probability weighting functions.

This paper examines the relationship between transportation quality, customer satisfaction and profitability. Specifically, this study examines the simultaneous and asynchronous effect of quality of transportation services on customer satisfaction and financial performance and then performs the same examination in relation to the effect of customer satisfaction on financial performance. The partial least squares approach to structural equation modelling is used to examine longitudinal data from 1995 to 2018 from the US airline industry. The findings suggest that low service quality in transportation has adverse effects on customer satisfaction and financial performance, while the impact of customer satisfaction on financial performance in the US Airline transportation industry is mixed. The authors found that the impact of customer satisfaction on financial performance is significant in full-service airlines but not in low-cost airlines. Surprisingly, the authors found no significant direct relationship between transportation quality and financial performance in the US airline industry.

A common practice among utility companies is to offer discounts to consumers who use a rival's services in an attempt to induce them to switch suppliers. This chapter examines a two-period model of price competition on a Hotelling line that captures this type of price discrimination. In the first period, firms have no information about individual consumers' preferences and, therefore, they post a single price. In the second period, each firm gains information about consumers' first-period purchase decisions. We show that firms have an incentive to use this information to price discriminate. A firm charges a lower price to its rival's customers (`pays consumers to switch') whenever the firm is not too disadvantaged with respect to its marginal cost. Even when consumers' switching costs are non-trivial, a re-segmentation of the market prevails in the unique subgame-perfect equilibrium to the game. An analysis of the impact of this kind of price discrimination on consumer surplus, firm profits, and social welfare is also presented.