This study attempts to find a correlation between commuting modes in Washington DC and characteristics of the city and the people that they serve. It investigates why some census tracts have experienced increases in the commuting share of alternative transportation, such as public transit, walking, and bicycling, while others haven't. Findings demonstrate that demographic variables such as percent Hispanic and foreign born were the strongest predictors of change in commute mode share followed by distance to train station. Land use variables demonstrated weak correlations with variations in mode share due most likely to a lack of density gradient within the study area. The creation of variables to determine land use mix by census tract posed technical challenges as well. Recommendations include policy addressing rising demand for more diverse transportation systems be implemented and further research be conducted on creating more accurate land use variables to include in the model.

Three weather sensitive multinomial logit models are estimated using the 2001 Transportation Tomorrow Survey in order explore the relationship between weather and home-based work trips within the City of Toronto, focusing on active modes of transportation. The data is restricted to non-captive commuters who have the option of alternating between all five basic modes of auto driver, auto passenger, transit, bike and walk with change in weather. Daily trip rates in various weather conditions are assessed. The combined effect of the daily trip rate and mode choice analysis is applied to several climate change scenarios. A 6oC increase in temperature can increase cycling trips by 17%, and reduce auto-passenger trips by 7%. A 20% increase or decrease in precipitation, however, is found to have much smaller impacts on all modes. Overall, the results confirm that impact of weather on active modes of transportation is significant enough to deserve attention at the research, data collection and planning levels.

Three weather sensitive multinomial logit models are estimated using the 2001 Transportation Tomorrow Survey in order explore the relationship between weather and home-based work trips within the City of Toronto, focusing on active modes of transportation. The data is restricted to non-captive commuters who have the option of alternating between all five basic modes of auto driver, auto passenger, transit, bike and walk with change in weather. Daily trip rates in various weather conditions are assessed. The combined effect of the daily trip rate and mode choice analysis is applied to several climate change scenarios. A 6oC increase in temperature can increase cycling trips by 17%, and reduce auto-passenger trips by 7%. A 20% increase or decrease in precipitation, however, is found to have much smaller impacts on all modes. Overall, the results confirm that impact of weather on active modes of transportation is significant enough to deserve attention at the research, data collection and planning levels.

It is now widely recognized that society’s over-reliance on the automobile contributes to environmental problems, especially in urban areas. Nevertheless, efforts to bring about modal shifts through transportation demand management strategies typically have had limited success. As a result, transportation research is increasingly focused on understanding the decision-making process of travel behaviour changes including mode choice and automobile ownership. The purpose of this study is to explore how individuals arrive at a decision to live either car-free or car-lite. Using a grounded-theory approach, this thesis explores the factors involved in a car-free/car-lite decision and the manner in which those factors work together to create the decision making process(es). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 driving members of a car-sharing organization, each of whom made a decision to go car-lite (car-sharing is their additional vehicle) or car-free (car-sharing is their primary vehicle). Five main interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: finances, personal values and attitudes, personal history, perceived accessibility and situational life events. In particular, the participants’ experiences reinforce the importance of situation life events in the decision-making process, a factor not commonly identified in behaviour change theory. Additionally, the participants’ narratives illustrate that intention is created from an individual’s inclination and ability to make a travel behaviour change. However, translation from intention into action appears to be conditionally dependent on contextual and/or situational changes, most often in the form of situational life events, that provide a push into or out of the decision-making process. Findings underscore the importance of life events as catalysts for bringing travel behaviour in line with an individual’s sense of what is important and what is possible. This research illustrates the relevance of qualitative work in advancing transportation research – particularly in understanding human travel decisions. While the current transportation-planning paradigm is appropriate for making short-term forecasts, we must recognize that non-linear, non-utilitarian, long-term, often qualitative factors, such as those identified in this research, are not exogenous to travel decision making. Results also provide a basis for reflecting on the appropriateness of various metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of transportation demand management initiatives.

It is now widely recognized that society’s over-reliance on the automobile contributes to environmental problems, especially in urban areas. Nevertheless, efforts to bring about modal shifts through transportation demand management strategies typically have had limited success. As a result, transportation research is increasingly focused on understanding the decision-making process of travel behaviour changes including mode choice and automobile ownership. The purpose of this study is to explore how individuals arrive at a decision to live either car-free or car-lite. Using a grounded-theory approach, this thesis explores the factors involved in a car-free/car-lite decision and the manner in which those factors work together to create the decision making process(es). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 driving members of a car-sharing organization, each of whom made a decision to go car-lite (car-sharing is their additional vehicle) or car-free (car-sharing is their primary vehicle). Five main interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: finances, personal values and attitudes, personal history, perceived accessibility and situational life events. In particular, the participants’ experiences reinforce the importance of situation life events in the decision-making process, a factor not commonly identified in behaviour change theory. Additionally, the participants’ narratives illustrate that intention is created from an individual’s inclination and ability to make a travel behaviour change. However, translation from intention into action appears to be conditionally dependent on contextual and/or situational changes, most often in the form of situational life events, that provide a push into or out of the decision-making process. Findings underscore the importance of life events as catalysts for bringing travel behaviour in line with an individual’s sense of what is important and what is possible. This research illustrates the relevance of qualitative work in advancing transportation research – particularly in understanding human travel decisions. While the current transportation-planning paradigm is appropriate for making short-term forecasts, we must recognize that non-linear, non-utilitarian, long-term, often qualitative factors, such as those identified in this research, are not exogenous to travel decision making. Results also provide a basis for reflecting on the appropriateness of various metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of transportation demand management initiatives.

In the analysis of travelers¡¦ decision-making behavior, Discrete Choice model in Revealed Preference data or Stated Preference data, such as logit model and probit model, is generally used in the exploration of travelers¡¦ mode choice behavior. Some former research adapted Structural Equation Model (SEM) or Fuzzy Theory in exploring the variables of travelers¡¦ psychological decision process, because the variables which were not easily measured directly and tend to be latent variables.This study combines Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and EMB Model in consumer behavior science, to investigate the relationship and degree of interaction between psychological variables and actual mode choice behavior. The comuter represent high percentage of inter-city transportation, therefore, this empirical study has focused on the commuters in Taipei metropolitan area. Commuter¡¦s feedback on MRT preference was collected through the face-to-face interview. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS10.0 for chi-square test, the regression analysis and multi-variables analysis. Through the study of their attitude, the degree of involvement, group affection and intention towards various modes, the psychological decision process for commuter was analyzed and concluded. The results of the research concluded that: private transportation users have higher degree of involvement to MRT than the public ones. It is observed that the variables of age, occupation, possession of veheche, the distance from commutes' place to MRT station, among all variables, have significant reciprocity with the degree of involvement for MRT.In the aspects the commuters' attitude of using the MRT¡¦s, both private and public transportation users showed positive opinions. Among all variables, the group influence had the least significance to the action intention, while the involvement and attitude showed high significance to the MRT¡¦s action intention.The public transportation users show higher difference between actual mode use behavior and intention, as compared to the private one. Therefore, the traffic authorities and businessman need to increase the quality of the service of MRT and convience of transfer between transportation modes, if they want to raise the percentage of commuters to using MRT.

Based on the Information Integration Theory, the current study investigates whether students¡¦ integration model of ticket fare and total travelling time difference will change when facing different safety conditions after they join the trials held by the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Company (KRTC). The result indicates that the students¡¦ integration model of ticket fare and total travelling time difference is the ¬Û¥[ model. By using a different model of discussion, the result of my questionnaire shows that the linear transportation behavior found by traditional Mode Choice Model can be maintained. The result of data analysis suggests that KRTC has to adopt different strategies to enhance students¡¦ willingfulness to change their vehicles for transportation. It is shown that students add the scale values of ticket fare and total travelling time difference to motivate them to change their vehicles for transportation. Therefore, if we want to enhance the willingness to change their transporting vehicles, it is more effective to provide a solution with a higher scale value. In this study, students' scale value of total travelling time difference was higher than ticket price. Hence, if KRTC wants to enhance their willingfulness to change transporting vehicles, it is a more effective strategy to devise a way to decrease total travelling time.

Unordered choice models are commonly used in the field of transportation and several other fields to analyze discrete choice behavior. In the past decade, there have been substantial advances in specifying and estimating such models to allow unobserved taste variations and flexible error covariance structures. However, the current estimation methods are still computationally intensive and often break down when spatial dependence structures are introduced (due to the resulting high dimensionality of integration in the likelihood function). But a recently proposed method, the Maximum Approximate Composite Marginal Likelihood (MACML) method, offers an effective approach to estimate such models. The MACML approach combines a composite marginal likelihood (CML) estimation approach with an approximation method to evaluate the multivariate standard normal cumulative distribution (MVNCD) function. The composite likelihood approach replaces the likelihood function with a surrogate likelihood function of substantially lower dimensionality, which is then subsequently evaluated using an analytic approximation method rather than simulation techniques. This combination of the CML with the specific analytic approximation for the MVNCD function is effective because it involves only univariate and bivariate cumulative normal distribution function evaluations, regardless of the dimensionality of the problem. For my dissertation, I have four objectives. The first is to evaluate the performance of the MACML method to estimate unordered response models by undertaking a Monte Carlo simulation exercise. The second is to formulate and estimate a spatial and temporal unordered discrete choice model and apply this model to a land use change context and to the mode choice decision of school children. The third objective is to formulate a random coefficient model with non-normal mixing distributions on model parameters which can be estimated using the MACML approach. Finally, the fourth objective us to propose an improvement to the MACML method by incorporating a second order MVNCD function that is more accurate and evaluate its performance in estimating parameters for a variety of model structures. / text

International marketing studies have extensively examined the antecedents of firms' marketing standardization/ adaptation decisions. However, it is unclear whether such decisions, once planned, codetermine the choice between buying and building foreign subsidiaries. Analyzing a sample of 150 foreign entries by Dutch firms, the authors find that the level of marketing adaptation planned for a wholly owned subsidiary is positively related to the likelihood that the subsidiary will be established through an acquisition rather than through a greenfield investment. Moreover, the authors find substantial evidence that this positive relationship is stronger for firms that (1) are establishing relatively larger subsidiaries, (2) have less experience with the industry entered, or (3) are entering less developed countries. The findings show that firms pursuing higher levels of marketing adaptation assign more value to the marketing adaptation advantages of acquisitions over greenfields, especially if the risks associated with implementing the planned adaptation level are high. In addition, firms typically strive for a fit between their international marketing strategy and their mode of foreign establishment. (authors' abstract)

Problems associated with traffic, such as traffic congestionand pollution, have occurred in major urban areas in particulardue to the increased use of cars. One possible way to reducethe use of cars is to replace commuter trips by car with othermodes of transport, such as a combination of car and publictransport called Park&amp;Ride. The aim of this thesis was tounderstand more about factors influencing the choice of modeand to find measures that could attract car drivers to Park&amp;Ride. A stated preference survey has been conducted inorder to quantify some standard factors. The factors used inthis stated choice experiment were: security at the lot,availability of spaces at the parking lot, costs at the parkinglot and walking distances between the parking space and thestation. The results indicate that security at the Park&amp;Ride facility is important. Both sexes assign a high value tosecure parking, but women are more willing to pay for lights atan unguarded parking lot. The results reveal that parkingfacilities, such as free parking and short distance betweenparking place and work at work, influence people’s choiceof mode. A general conclusion is that there is potential forincreasing the use of Park&amp;Ride facilities, especiallyamong women and respondents over 30 years. Key words:Mode choice, valuation, traffic reduction,stated preference, factors, Park&amp;Ride / <p>NR 20140805</p>