Analysis and modelling the effects of information accuracy on travellers´ behaviour

The investigation of the effects of information on travellers´ behaviour at individual level is a pre-requisite for any analysis on the impacts of ATIS on traffic networks. It is widely expected that travellers´ behaviour can be strongly influenced by the ability of the information system in making accurate estimations of the actual travel times they will experience on the network; however, relatively few experimental studies have been developed to this regard. In this paper such an analysis is carried out; in particular, the paper investigates the effect of the information accuracy (and of its dispersion over time) on travellers´ behaviour. The final objective was to specify, calibrate and validate different modelling approach for simulating in which way the respondents react to ATIS and how the travellers´ concordance depends on the level of information accuracy. At this aim a stated preference experiment were built, discrete choice models based on random utility theory were developed, switching and holding approaches were investigated, homoscedastic and heteroscedastic models were estimated.