Accounting for random taste heterogeneity in airport-choice modelling

In this paper, we present the findings from a disaggregate analysis of the choice of airport, airline and access-mode for business travellers living in the San Francisco bay area. Aside from formulating the multi-dimensional choice process, the main objective is to explore random taste heterogeneity amongst decision-makers in their evaluation of the attractiveness of the different alternatives. The results indicate that this is present in tastes relating to in-vehicle access-time, access-cost and flight frequency. Accounting for this heterogeneity leads to gains in model fit, but more importantly, leads to important insights into the differences in behaviour across decision-makers, and avoids the bias introduced into trade-offs when using fixed coefficients in the presence of significant levels of heterogeneity. In terms of substantive results, the models also reveal a significant impact of changes in out-of-vehicle access-time, indicate a preference for jet-services over turboprop-flights, and show that past experience plays an important role in air-travel choice behaviour. 1