Study On Commuter's Route Choice Behavior Based On Prospect Theory And The Influence Factors Of Risk Attitude

The transportation problems have been the restriction factor of rapid and effective development of cities. Because of the limitation of urban land resources, there is no enough space in large and medium-sized cities to build roads and it is not achievement to solve traffic congestion by constructing new roads. Traffic demand management and control has been the main measure to solve transportation problems by regulating supply and demand.Human beings as the main body of traffic, it is important to study of the mechanism of human choice behavior in traffic to lay a foundation for traffic management and planning.Compared with expected utility theory, prospect theory can better describe the decision making behavior in uncertain environment, and it is used to analysis traveler's route choice behavior in uncertainty, gradually. Prospect theory used relevant parameters in model to reflect travelers' attitudes of risk, and different people have different risk attitudes, it is also different of their route choice behaviors. This paper, from the perspective of risk attitude,explores the impact of risk attitude on the relevant parameters of the prospect theory model.This paper designed a stated preference questionnaire survey and used empirical data for study. This questionnaire survey includes three parts: risk attitude, route choice and personal characteristics. Travelers are classification by their risk attitude, the influence factors of travelers' risk attitude is researched with travelers' personal characteristics, and use route choice data to analysis travelers' route choice behavior with different risk attitudes.Based on the data of the individual characteristics of travelers, the regression analysis result showed travelers' risk attitudes is significantly influenced of travelers' occupation and driving years. Travelers, with longer driving years, are more risk seeking preference in route choice. And enterprise employees may be higher on the travel time effectiveness in commuter travel, and they are more preferred to risky road.Research results show that the parameter of risk preference and loss aversion is smaller than Kahneman and Tversky's study, which means that the level of travelers' risk preference and loss aversion is lower than other economic studies, like financial investment. The risk preference parameter in gain area and loss aversion parameter in loss area of travelers who are risk seeking are bigger than risk natural and risk aversion travelers'. People with high risk seeking is more likely to choose the road with bigger risky, for seeking the bigger gains.Therefore, the parameters of value function should be bigger for traveler who are risk seeking when use prospect theory to predict the route choice behavior. It is not obvious for travelers, who are risk aversion, to loss aversion in losses area.Through the empirical research, it shows that prospect theory can better describe travelers' route choice behaviors, and when analysis travelers' route choice behavior by prospect theory, according to research group characteristics, using the corresponding risk preference parameter and loss aversion parameter can better describe the travelers' route choice behavior.