Value of travel time for university students: a revealed/stated preference analysis

Although the value of travel time (VTT) is extensively used in transport economics in order to conduct cost–benefit analysis and there have been numerous studies estimating this information for different countries, transport modes and type of users, there are very few estimates for the university students commuting from their hometown to the university-town. This article presents a VTT estimate for the students enrolled at the University of Trieste (Italy) based on sequential approach which: (1) collects revealed preference data in order to estimate a preliminary VTT; (2) generates C-efficient Bayesian designs pivoted around the characteristics of homogenous segments of the population and (3) administers an integrated revealed and stated preference questionnaire to a selected sample. The estimate obtained on the basis of the combined revealed and stated preference data ranges from 2.8 to 1.4€/h is significantly lower than the estimates obtained on the bases of the revealed preference data only, which ranges from 18 to 13€/h, and differs from the VTT for commuting to work reported in the literature by a factor of about 6.

[1]  Ulla Kaisa Knutsson.  SWEDISH NATIONAL ROAD AND TRANSPORT RESEARCH INSTITUTE , 2003 .

[2]  M. Wardman.  THE VALUE OF TRAVEL TIME. A REVIEW OF BRITISH EVIDENCE , 1998 .

[3]  R. Scarpa,et al.  Benefit Estimates for Landscape Improvements: Sequential Bayesian Design and Respondents’ Rationality in a Choice Experiment , 2005, Land Economics.

[4]  J. Shires,et al.  An international meta-analysis of values of travel time savings. , 2009, Evaluation and program planning.

[5]  M. Wardman,et al.  Meta-analysis of UK Values of Time: An Update , 2009 .

[6]  E. Marcucci,et al.  The urban road pricing scheme to curb pollution in Milan, Italy: Description, impacts and preliminary cost-benefit analysis assessment , 2010 .

[7]  Romeo Danielis,et al.  Comparing Single and Joint Preferences: A Choice Experiment on Residential Location in Three-Member Households , 2011 .

[8]  D. Hensher,et al.  Stated preference analysis of travel choices: the state of practice , 2004 .

[9]  J. Loomis,et al.  What's to Know About Hypothetical Bias in Stated Preference Valuation Studies? , 2011 .

[10]  R. Scarpa,et al.  Deriving and Testing Efficient Estimates of WTP Distributions in Destination Choice Models , 2009 .

[11]  Mogens Fosgerau,et al.  The value of travel time variance , 2010 .

[12]  Francisco Javier Amador Morera,et al.  El valor subjetivo del tiempo de viaje de los estudiantes universitarios cuando las preferencias son heterogéneas , 2003 .

[13]  P. Coto-Millán,et al.  Estimation of the Economic Value of Student Urban Travel Time , 2007 .

[14]  Romeo Danielis,et al.  Testing for nonlinearity in the choice of a freight transport service , 2012 .

[15]  Kenneth A. Small,et al.  Valuing time and reliability: assessing the evidence from road pricing demonstrations , 2003 .

[16]  A. Reggiani,et al.  Meta-Analysis and the Value of Travel Time Savings: A Transatlantic Perspective in Passenger Transport , 2007 .

[17]  John M. Rose,et al.  Experimental design influences on stated choice outputs: An empirical study in air travel choice , 2009 .

[18]  David A. Hensher,et al.  Hypothetical bias, choice experiments and willingness to pay , 2010 .

[19]  A. Daly,et al.  MODELS USING MIXED STATED-PREFERENCE AND REVEALED-PREFERENCE INFORMATION. , 1991 .

[20]  Mark Wardman,et al.  Public transport values of time , 2004 .

[21]  Edoardo Marcucci,et al.  Freight transport analysis: new trends and methodologies. Introduction , 2012 .

[22]  Gunnar Isacsson,et al.  The trade off between time and money: Is there a difference between real and hypothetical choices? , 2007 .

[23]  John M. Rose,et al.  Design Efficiency for Non-Market Valuation with Choice Modelling: How to Measure it, What to Report and Why , 2008 .

[24]  Michel Bierlaire,et al.  Circumventing the problem of the scale: discrete choice models with multiplicative error terms , 2007 .

[25]  Michel Wedel,et al.  Profile Construction in Experimental Choice Designs for Mixed Logit Models , 2002 .

[26]  Romeo Danielis,et al.  A medium term evaluation of the Ecopass road pricing scheme in Milan: economic, environmental and transport impacts , 2012 .

[27]  M. Wardman.  A REVIEW OF BRITISH EVIDENCE ON TIME AND SERVICE QUALITY VALUATIONS , 2001 .

[28]  Kenneth Train,et al.  Utility in Willingness to Pay Space: A Tool to Address Confounding Random Scale Effects in Destination Choice to the Alps , 2008 .

[29]  John M. Rose,et al.  Constructing efficient choice experiments , 2005 .

[30]  Barbara Kanninen,et al.  Optimal Experimental Design for Double-Bounded Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation , 1993 .

[31]  John M. Rose,et al.  THE DESIGN OF STATED CHOICE EXPERIMENTS: THE STATE OF PRACTICE AND FUTURE CHALLENGES , 2004 .

[32]  Barbara Kanninen,et al.  Design of Sequential Experiments for Contingent Valuation Studies , 1993 .