Medium And Long Distance Intercity Travel Mode Choice Behavior Considering Psychological Latent Variables And Heterogeneity

With the vigorous construction of high-speed railways,the rapid development of civil aviation,the increase of private car ownership and the significant reduction of coach,the development of intercity transport system is facing the problem of imbalance and insufficiency.At the same time,with the improvement of residents’ living standards,intercity travelers pay more attention to the safety,comfort,convenience and other service quality elements of transportation on the way.However,the quality,efficiency and service level of the existing intercity travel modes are not high,and it is difficult to meet the heterogeneous travel needs of high-quality,diversified and personalized passengers.Therefore,it is necessary to study the behavior of intercity travel mode choice.By predicting the sharing rate of intercity travel mode and defining the main factors affecting the choice of intercity passenger travel mode,the paper provides the basis for the government and operation management departments on how to improve the quality of intercity transportation service,optimize the structure of intercity travel mode and rationally allocate the resources of intercity passenger transportation.This paper first extends the application of TPB according to the characteristics of medium-long distance intercity travel,adding "Travel Habit" as a psychological latent variable,and taking "Emotional Attitude" such as satisfaction degree and preference degree as the observation index of "Travel Attitude".Based on the hypothesis framework of TPB,MIMIC was constructed to study the formation mechanism of passengers’ choice intention for train,high-speed train and air from two perspectives of travelers’ socioeconomic statistical attributes and psychological latent variables.The results show that travel attitude has a significant impact on high-speed train travel intention,travel habits have a significant impact on air travel intention,and subjective norms have a significant impact on train travel intention.The results show that intercity passengers’ travel attitudes have a significant impact on high-speed train travel intentions,travel habits have a significant impact on air travel intentions,and subjective norms have a significant impact on train travel intentions.The study also showed that the civil aviation passenger’s monthly income and education attribute will influence the formation of travel habit,high-speed train passenger’s age and job attribute will affect the formation of travel attitude.The train passenger’s monthly income dramatically affects the subjective norm,education attribute dramatically affects the perceived behavior control.MNL、SEM-MNL and RPL were constructed based on the calibration results of mental latent variables by MIMIC.Fit index and Hit Ratio test were used to compare the three models.The results show that introducing traveler heterogeneity into RPL has higher fitting effect and prediction accuracy than SEM-MNL which only considers psychological latent variables.Meanwhile,according to the utility function of the RPL,the results show that the time and cost of intercity passengers’ choice of train,high-speed train and air are the key influencing variables.The utility of travel time and travel cost is affected by the heterogeneity of monthly income and number of companions among travelers.In addition,the pre-trip connection time,passengers’ travel attitude and travel habit also have a significant impact on the behavior of medium and long distance intercity travel mode choice.