Research On Airport Choice Of Air Travelers In Multi-airport Region

With the development of social and economy,China’s civil aviation industry has made great progress,and the airport industry,as an indispensable part of it,has entered a new stage of development: there is the phenomenon of multiple airports serving one region in the Yangtze River Delta,Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,Pearl River Delta and other metropolitan areas,what were called the Multi-airport region(MAR)by Chinese and foreign researchers.However,There are some problems with the above-mentioned MAR in the current development,due to the lack of development experience and market competition,such as the insufficient of operation support capacity,unbalanced regional development and homogeneous development of the airports.The key to solve the problems of MAR is to take corresponding measures guided by the needs of passengers.Therefore,through the empirical analysis on airport choice of air travelers in MAR,we will identify the factors affecting passenger airport choice and forms an objective and comprehensive description of passenger demand and airport choice process.Based on the analysis results,it proposes relevant suggestions for the development of MAR,which is great practical significance for the development of civil aviation industry,MAR planning and airport operation.Firstly,it is found that previous researchers have not paid attention to the irrational factors that affect passengers’ choice of airport by the literature review,in addition,the variable selection process of previous studies has some unreasonable aspects,such as strong subjectivity and lack of scientific and rigorous methods.Therefore,the grounded theory method was first used to construct the theoretical model of passenger airport choice,and then factor analysis method was used to refine the above theoretical model.The optimization of the indicators of passenger airport choice was realized which obtains rational and irrational factors.Next,we constructed the passenger airport choice model base on the MAR in the Yangtze River delta selected through argumentation and the passenger behavior data obtained in there.The specific model construction process is as follows: first,the model of passengerairport choice is constructed based on rational factors(model 1).Empirical research results show that rational factors have significant influence on passenger airport choice.Secondly,the model was modeled based on rational and irrational factors(model 2),and the empirical results showed that irrational factors also had significant influence.Thirdly,by comparing the operation results of the two models,it is proved that the model with two kinds of factors has higher fitting degree and more accurate prediction,so as to realize the optimization of the model.Finally,the market segmentation was applied based on the passenger travel characteristics.And according to the results of empirical research and market segmentation we respectively put forward strategic recommendations for the integral development of MAR and airport operations,.