Choice of Season Cards in Public Transport : A Study of a Stated Preference Experiment

This paper studies a Stated Preference (SP) experiment on the choice of type of (Rail) season card, conducted among current Dutch Railways season cardholders. They were asked to choose from the following three alternatives: (1) an unrestricted season card, (2) a cheaper season card with peak travel and travel frequency restrictions, and (3) not buying a season card. Multinomial logit (MNL), nested logit and mixed logit models are used to analyse their choices. It is found that MNL underestimates the price sensitivities (as measured by the price elasticities) of the respondents and overestimates their Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for reductions in the restrictions. The mixed logit estimation shows that there are (unobserved) differences in the marginal utilities of the price of the card (response heterogeneity), and the utility of owning a season card (preference heterogeneity). In the Netherlands a large share of commuters and business travellers receive travel cost compensation from their employer. However, empirical studies often do not control for the effect of travel cost compensation. We find, as expected, that travel cost compensation has a large impact on the price sensitivities and choices of the respondents