Is individual environmental consciousness one of the determinants in transport mode choice?

This article models negative impact on the environment as one of the attributes of transport mode. By this modelling, we are able to examine whether individual environmental consciousness of this impact plays a significant role in his/her choice of transport mode. A survey data from Saito and Onohara Area in Northern Osaka of Japan is used to estimate the model with the Heteroscedastic Extreme Value specification. Both of the estimated and simulated results imply that individual environmental consciousness does influence his/her decision on transport mode choice in the sample. Furthermore, the likelihood ratio tests indicate that both the utility and scale parameters are not equivalent across sub-samples of university commuters, research-facility commuters and residents. The results of the comparison across sub-samples suggest that sometimes we may learn more from sub-dividing a whole sample into several sub-samples if we could distinguish them by their characteristics.