Research On Cumulative Prospect Theory-based Pricing Optimization For High-speed Rail Freight Train

With the construction of high-speed railway network in China,the radiation capacity of high-speed railway has been further enhanced,which has laid a good foundation for the rapid development of high-speed railway.At the same time,with the emergence of new forms such as e-commerce,express delivery,and instant delivery,the transportation demand for high value-added and time-sensitive goods is also growing rapidly.The high-speed rail freight train has the characteristics of speed,safety,reliability and punctuality,which provides a new development opportunity for improving the development of the express network system.However,the development of my country’s high-speed rail freight train express has just begun,and its proportion in the competition in the medium and long distance,high value-added transportation market is extremely low,and there are many unreasonable places in the formulation of its freight rates.Since the freight rate plays a key role in the flow of cargo flow and is directly related to the benefits of carrying out the high-speed rail freight train transportation business,it is particularly important to formulate a reasonable freight rate.Therefore,this paper takes the freight rates of high-speed rail freight trains as the research object,fully considers the choice behavior of cargo owners on different modes of transportation in market competition,and proposes an optimization plan for high-speed rail freight train pricing.The main contents and findings of the study are as follows:Firstly,the development characteristics and operating costs of my country’s high-speed rail freight trains are analyzed.This paper analyzes the development status,market competitors,target market,pricing factors and pricing principles of high-speed rail freight trains.The formulation of freight prices should comprehensively consider the influence of factors such as transportation cost,transportation demand,market competition and choice of cargo owners,and analyzes emphatically.The operating cost accounting method for a high-speed freight train EMU.Then,a model of shipper’s choice behavior based on cumulative prospect theory is constructed.Constructed considering the uncertainty of the owner’s choice of transportation mode and the characteristics of the owner’s "bounded rationality",applied the cumulative prospect theory to the owner’s choice of transportation mode,used the cumulative prospect theory to describe the owner’s choice behavior,and analyzed the impact.The factors and transfer mechanism of cargo owner’s choice and selection,and the reference point model is established,and then the value function and decision weight function of the cargo owner’s express mode selection decision are constructed,and the logit model is used to analyze the relationship between the freight rate of high-speed rail freight trains and the sharing rate of cargo flow.Finally,a two-tier pricing model based on cumulative prospect theory is constructed.Taking into account the interests of both the railway department and the cargo owner,a twolevel planning model for high freight train freight rates based on the decision-making framework of cumulative prospect theory is constructed.The upper-level planning model considers the high-speed rail freight train and air freight competition from the perspective of transportation companies.,the objective function is to maximize the profit of the high-speed rail freight train operating department.The lower-level planning introduces the cumulative prospect theory to build the cargo owner’s choice model for the two transportation modes.The objective function is to minimize the total generalized transportation cost of the cargo owner group,and the solution method of the heuristic algorithm based on sensitivity analysis is given.Take the Beijing West High-speed Rail Pass as an example to study the pricing of high-speed rail freight trains.Considering the "bounded rationality" of the cargo owner,the optimal transportation price,the corresponding cargo flow sharing rate and the corresponding optimal profit under the two-tier planning pricing model are calculated.Through MATLAB software to solve,it is concluded that the optimal freight rate under the balance of the interests of both the cargo owner and the high-speed rail freight train department is 2.05 yuan/ton-kilometer,the corresponding freight volume is 859.3 tons,and the corresponding profit is 391,540.05 yuan.Finally,the sensitivity analysis of key parameters is carried out to study the cumulative prospect value of transportation modes under different parameter values,and the changes in the optimal freight rate,cargo flow sharing rate and profit of high-speed rail freight trains.The pricing optimization model of this paper can provide a reference for the price structure adjustment of the high-speed rail freight train pricing decision-making department.