Modeling Inertia and Compliance Mechanisms in Route Choice Behavior Under Real-Time Information

This research examines route choice, in the presence of real-time information, as a consequence of two underlying behavioral mechanisms: compliance and inertia. The compliance mechanism reflects the propensity of a user to comply with the information supplied by advanced traveler information systems (ATIS). The inertial mechanism represents the tendency of users to continue on their current paths. These two mechanisms in route choice are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive. A framework is proposed to model these mechanisms explicitly. The proposed framework decomposes the route choice into two states by exploiting the user’s path choice structure (resulting from the current choice prior to the decision of interest) and the information supplied by ATIS. In each state, the mechanisms are incorporated by associating their utilities with those that reflect the specific attributes of the alternative paths. The resulting nested choice structure is implemented using the multinomial probit model. This framework is illustrated using route choice data obtained from dynamic interactive simulator experiments. The empirical results strongly support the simultaneous presence of both the compliance and inertia mechanisms in route choice behavior. The results also indicate that information quality, network loading and day-to-day evolution, level-of-service measures, and trip-makers’ prior experience are significant determinants of route choice through the inertial and compliance mechanisms. These findings have important implications in travel behavior forecasting, ATIS design and evaluation, demand management, and network state prediction.