Analyzing the Determinants of Freight Shippers Behavior: Own-Account versus Purchased Transport in Andalusia

Previous work in the demand for freight transportation has focused in the rail-truck substitution problem, leaving aside the prior own-account versus third-party tradeoff, often found in transportation decision-making. In Andalusia, domestic freight transport takes place mostly by road, an important part of which is own-account transport. The purpose of this paper is to analyze shippers' behavior relative to this question, paying particular attention to whether the decision to use a private form of transport is taken on a short term or on a medium term horizon. In order to provide a quantitative evaluation, as an illustrative case, the models developed are tested on data gathered by means of a sample survey conducted to Andalusian enterprises belonging to the food industry