TY - JOUR
T1 - Commuters' mode choice as a coordination problem
T2 - A framed field experiment on traffic policy in Hyderabad, India
AU - Chidambaram, Bhuvanachithra
AU - Janssen, Marcus
AU - Rommel, Jens
AU - Zikos, Dimitrios
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Silvia Cason and Frederike Gehrigk for their help in developing and testing the experiment during a workshop at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in June 2012. Excellent research assistance in the field was provided by Rohit Chandragiri, Praveena Reddy, Rajiv Reddy and Ravi Teja. We are also grateful to Julian Sagebiel, Christine Werthmann, three anonymous referees, and the editor Juan de Dios Ortúzar, for their very constructive comments, which helped to improve the paper. We would like to thank Christopher Hank for excellent language editing. This study has been conducted within the “Future Megacities” program of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). An additional research grant from the “Fiat Panis” foundation helped in financing the field work. Financial support from these two sources is gratefully acknowledged. Bhuvanachithra Chidambaram would also like to thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for a PhD scholarship received under the program “Future Megacities – Energy- and climate-efficient structures in urban growth centres.”
PY - 2014/7
Y1 - 2014/7
N2 - All major Indian cities face a severe transport crisis, with the number of cars on the road increasing every day. Policy makers are trying to keep pace with this growth by supplying more roads, largely neglecting demand-side policy measures. We have developed an economic experiment to investigate behavioral responses of citizens to such measures. Drawing on a sample of 204 white-collar commuters from Hyderabad, India, we model mode choice as a coordination problem and analyze how bus subsidies, increased parking costs, and public information on preferential car use can affect mode choice. We find that pecuniary treatments are effective for shifting behavior towards socially more desirable outcomes and increasing total benefits. Mode choice is relatively unaffected by socio-economic variables like gender, education or income but is significantly affected by actual traffic behavior. We discuss limitations of the applied sampling, conclude with a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of economic experiments in transportation research, and offer an outlook on how further experimentation could enrich the policy debate.
AB - All major Indian cities face a severe transport crisis, with the number of cars on the road increasing every day. Policy makers are trying to keep pace with this growth by supplying more roads, largely neglecting demand-side policy measures. We have developed an economic experiment to investigate behavioral responses of citizens to such measures. Drawing on a sample of 204 white-collar commuters from Hyderabad, India, we model mode choice as a coordination problem and analyze how bus subsidies, increased parking costs, and public information on preferential car use can affect mode choice. We find that pecuniary treatments are effective for shifting behavior towards socially more desirable outcomes and increasing total benefits. Mode choice is relatively unaffected by socio-economic variables like gender, education or income but is significantly affected by actual traffic behavior. We discuss limitations of the applied sampling, conclude with a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of economic experiments in transportation research, and offer an outlook on how further experimentation could enrich the policy debate.
KW - Coordination game
KW - Experimental economics
KW - Hyderabad
KW - India
KW - Mode switching
KW - Public transport
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U2 - 10.1016/j.tra.2014.03.014
DO - 10.1016/j.tra.2014.03.014
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84899657727
SN - 0965-8564
VL - 65
SP - 9
EP - 22
JO - Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
JF - Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
ER -