Sense and Sensibility - Sources of Uncertainty and Ambiguity Attitudes of Individual Commuters 

15:30-17:00, Friday, December 8, 2023

I-206, Boxue Building, DUFE

Dr. Yu is now a postdoctoral researcher at the department of spatial economics of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She earned her Ph.D. in behavioural economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her research interests include decision theory, experimental economics, and transport economics. She has her paper published in Management Science and Journal of Public Economics.

There is growing attention in the complex pattern of uncertainty attitudes in the traffic context. For example, people may choose a transport mode/route/departure time because they hold certain attitudes towards the travel time uncertainty associated with mode/route/departure time. Existing studies often assume that travellers treat travel time uncertainty as risk, i.e., outcomes with known probability distribution. Hence our existing understanding of the behavioural mechanism of travel time uncertainty is focused on risk preference. It is rare, however, when travellers have precise information on the probability distribution of the network. In fact, travellers often face ambiguous travel times, i.e., with unknown probability distribution. In this study, we develop a novel framework of uncertainty attitudes in transport context to investigate decision-making under uncertainty for commuting travels, which are day-to-day type of repeated situations. 

Specifically, we focus on the role of ambiguity attitudes in transport mode choice. We hypothesise that people's attitudes towards travel time uncertainty are sources-dependent - e.g., some people may be more averse to ambiguity from a car trip than from a public transport trip, or the other way around.

We conducted an online experiment (N=1200) among Prolific participants in England. Our experiment design consists of a baseline group and two treated groups: one with additional information from historical travel time and another considering a commute trip from participants' real life. We identify the role of the following distinctive aspects in the decision-making process of travel time uncertainty: (a) how people perceive uncertainties (e.g., ambiguity-induced insensitivity), (b) whether and to what extent people like or dis-like ambiguity (e.g., ambiguity aversion/neutrality/seeking). Furthermore, we aim to establish whether and how the aforementioned aspects are linked to transport mode preferences. 

For more information of the seminar, scan the following QR code(s) to join Tencent QQ group (904 544 292) or WeChat group named "IAER Seminar (4)", please.

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