The Influence of Alternative Acceptability, Attribute Thresholds and Choice Response Certainty on Automobile Purchase Preferences

Two issues that reflect how individuals make travel or vehicle purchase choices are the relevance of attribute levels associated with alternatives, and the extent to which the respondent is certain of actually choosing the alternative that they indicated was their preferred alternative. This paper studies the influence of acceptability of each alternative, attribute thresholds, and choice response certainty on automobile purchase preferences, 'scaling' of the standard utility expression to account for perceived acceptability of each alternative, and perceived attribute thresholds. A comparison of the models shows the significant improvement in predictive power with inferred direct elasticities that are substantially different. © 2012 LSE and the University of Bath