Evaluating the effects of information reliability on travellers’ route choice

Purpose This paper analyses travellers’ behaviour with respect
to route choice in a context where an Advanced Traveller
Information System (ATIS) is in place. ATIS are important
applications in the field of intelligent transportation systems
(ITS). However, the practical impact of ATIS is still a matter
for debate, and identification of expected route choice behaviour
under ATIS is one of themain ways to assess their practical
importance.
Methods Travellers’ choices are frequently explored by
means of stated preference (SP) approaches. In this paper
we discuss some issues to be addressed when an SP survey is
carried out, with particular reference to cases where a repeated
choice approach is employed in the survey.
Results Our analysis concerns an application of the SP approach
in a pilot study aimed at identifying the effects of
ATIS accuracy on travellers’ compliance with information.
Conclusions This paper aims tomake two major contributions.
First of all, empirical analyses based on proper indicators and
statistical tests are suggested in order to evaluate how the
collected data have to be handled in order to eliminate transient
route-choice observations. These are due to the warm-up phase
inherently associated with the survey method adopted,
dealing with repeated choices. Secondly, we analyse
(stationary) route choice in order to assess the effects of
information reliability (and the kind of information) on both
route choice and compliance.