Does Money Matter? A Theory-Driven Growth Mixture Model to Explain Travel-Mode Choice with Experimental Data

Abstract

In the present article we apply a growth mixture model using Mplus via STREAMS to delineate the mechanism underlying travel-mode choice. Three waves of an experimental field study conducted in Frankfurt Main, Germany, are applied for the statistical analysis. Five major questions are addressed: (1) whether the choice of public transport rather than the car changes over time; (2) whether a soft policy intervention to change travel mode choice has any effect on the travel-mode chosen; (3) whether one can identify different groups of people regarding the importance allocated to monetary and time considerations for the decision of which travel mode to use; (4) whether the different subgroups of people have different initial states and rates of change in their travel-model choices; (5) whether sociodemographic variables have an additional effect on the latent class variables and on the changes in travel-mode choice over time. We also found that choice of public transportation in our study is stable over time. ...