Introducing Reference-point To Value Of Travel Time

ABSTRACT:In transport economics, studies on the value of travel time are obviously important. In the early1960s, scholars have been doing a number of theoretical and empirical reserach on the value of travel time. It is commonly believed that the value of travel time is less susceptible to the decision-makers’experience, expectation or endowment, saving on the value of travel time is the most direct form to improve the resource utilization efficiency, and is also the fundamental impetus to the development of transportation industry. However, travel time itself is irreversible and cannot be traded, which make its value judgment subjective to a great extent. It can be embodied in that value of travel time of the losses and gains given by most travelers is asymmetric: loss of travel time is worth more than the profit. Along with the high-speed development of economy and transportation technology, the evaluation concept of value of travel time has significantly changed. It changes from the angle of purely saving into more and more emphasis on loss aversion. And in the point of this shift, the significance of value of travel time to people lies in not making a greater loss of travel time delays. At the same time, the shift of evaluation concept also means that the development of transportation industry is facing an important periodical transformation. Therefore, the re-examination and measurement from the perspectives of loss aversion have great theoretical and practical influence on value of travel time.In plenty of researches on value of travel time by utility theory, because very few scholars examine value of travel time from perspective of loss aversion, which led to a defect in traditional analysis method--gnored the important role of reference point. Therefore, in this sense, traditional researches on value of travel time should be ideas and methods of static analysis from single perspective. So based on the assumption that the demand for transportation should be a derivative, the author made some modifications for researches on traditional value of travel time from the perspective of travel choice, and the main work and research ideas are as follows:1. innovatively brought the reference point into indifference curve analysis of travel time and transport cost alternative from perspective of travel choice, and distinguished "profits" and "loss" in line with the reference point position, and thus established a framework of value of travel time analysis with dual perspectives in both losses and savings in order to explain path dependence and loss aversion effect when people evaluate value of travel time. However, from perspective of deepening the researches, this analysis framework helps further explain the reliability and non-uniformity of value of travel time, in which it was conclude that relative value of travel time has more influence on travel choice.2. Utilized reference-dependence analysis framework to improve traditional researches on value of travel time, which helps to validate the effect of universal value of travel time loss aversion. In the meantime, this model concluded that the degree of travel time loss aversion by people should be greater than loss aversion for ticket prices.3. the measurement model in which value of travel time of transportation system or channel derived from reference-dependencies more operational, which helps a lot to improve the defect of value of travel time model from saving perspective to estimate model, re-recognize the evaluation system of transportation and complete the transportation planning model establishment and etc.Besides, the applications of reference point analysis include elastic analysis of travel time, policy of "staggered working hours", and discussion on degree of satisfaction for travel time services, and so on.