Mode choice and credit trading behaviour under the premise of tradeable mobility credits

Abstract

This research aims to provide empirical insights into the mode choice and trade-off behaviour of travellers under the premise of a tradeable mobility credits (TMC) scheme. By utilising TMC instead of money to pay for travel and allowing travellers to trade TMC among themselves, travellers’ behavioural adaptations are likely to be drastically different from other travel demand management schemes. To gain better understanding of traveller’s behaviour, we devise a stated preference experiment with two different types of tasks: (1) a conventional mode choice experiment and (2) a TMC trading platform, where respondents may buy or sell. Preliminary results show that the number of credits at the respondents disposal vastly influences their willingness-to-pay (WtP), i.e. higher balance means higher WtP. This finding suggests that, under the right premise, travellers can potentially make substantial alterations to their travel behaviour.