Incorporating unobservable heterogeneity in discrete choice model : mode choice model for shopping trips

In this thesis, we propose a methodology for incorporating attitudinal data in a choice model to capture unobservable heterogeneity across the population. The key features of this approach are, 1) the concept of latent attitudes, and the assumption that 2) the respondent's answers to psychometric attitudinal questions relating to the importance of attributes are manifestations of these attitudes and that 3) those attitudinal data bring sufficient information to capture unobservable heterogeneity across the population in the context of choice behavior. Each individual is probabilistically assigned to a finite number of segments according to his/her own value of latent attitudinal variable(s) as well as to threshold parameter(s) common to the population. Segment-specific parameters are estimated simultaneously. An empirical case study on shopping trip mode choice demonstrates the effectiveness of the methodology.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• Hosoda, Takamichi, 1965-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Moshe Ben-Akiva.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9498

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9498