Analysis Of Travel Behavior Under Dynamic Traffic Information And Willingness-to-Pay For Information

Along with the expansion of city size, traffic congestion issue has become more and more serious. It is a big challenge to use the existing transportation infrastructure effectively. Historical experiences show that the provision of traffic information can help people to choose the right path or departure time to their destinations. Under this circumstance, this study mainly focuses on the effect of the high-accuracy in-vehicle dynamic traffic information in mitigating traffic congestion from the viewpoint of travel behavior. Willingness-to-pay (WTP) of this in-vehicle dynamic navigation system is also an important part of this study.In this study, using the SP survey data, PCL model is used to evaluate the effects of dynamic traffic information by exploring how drivers make a joint choice of departure time and driving route under the information provision. The analysis result shows that the provision of dynamic information can induce people to depart at off peak hours and to choose the ring road or branch road rather than trunk road. The information provision is really helpful to transform people’s travel behavior and mitigate the traffic congestion to some extent.Now that dynamic information provision has the crucial influence on improving the traffic situation, this study also analyzes the willingness-to-pay of the information acquisition device, which is known as the in-vehicle dynamic navigation system. Since the observed WTP value is censored, a discrete-continuous model is developed in this study to divide the whole WTP process into two parts:whether to buy and how much to pay. For the two decision parts, Logit model and regression model are used separately which are estimated simultaneously. By exploring the influence factors of the WTP, this study makes a theoretical basis for the navigation device promotion in the future.