An analysis of effects of trend information upon route choice behaviour by in-laboratory experiment

This study focuses on the possibility that providing the information on short-term trend of traffic condition (trend information) with exiting travel time information might affect the decision-makings of travelers and lead to the enhancement in traffic control by information provision. As an initial step to confirm the effectiveness of trend information, this study conducts the in-laboratory experiment to obtain a kind of panel data of route choices under the provision of information. In this study the parameters of Mixed Logit Model are estimated in order to statistically analyze the influences of trend information upon decision-makings of respondents considering the accuracy of information. The basic findings obtained in this study are as follows. 1)There is a strong possibility that the trend information may significantly affect the decision-makings on route choices of respondents. 2)The influence of information upon the decision-makings of respondents may depend upon the accuracy of both travel time information and trend one. 3)Judging from the estimated parameters of standard deviation of travel time information, there must be the heterogeneity in the sensitivity toward the travel time information among the respondents.