Mode Choice and Escort Decisions in School Trips: Application of a Copula-Based Model

A considerable shift has happened in mode choice and students’ escort decisions regarding the school trip around the world during the last decades. This shift of using more non-active modes has undesirable consequences including: physical inactivity among students, traffic jams during peak hours, and adverse environmental impacts. Hence, understanding the behavior of decision makers in regard to mode choice and escorting decisions is crucial for controlling this trend and promoting active modes of travel. This study is an effort to evaluate transportation mode choice decision and the way that students are accompanied by their parents to school, in a joined modeling structure as it is believed that these decisions are jointly made by parents. Two modeling formulations are used a nested logit model and a copula-based model. Results showed that the copula model outperforms the nested logit model. It was also found that modeling these two decisions in an independent way can mislead the policy assessment.