Preferences for long-distance coach transport: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment

Compared to other transport modes, coach transport continues to have a limited share in long-distance travel. Nevertheless, this can change due to the recent liberalization of the coach market in many West European countries. In this paper, we analyse if long-distance travellers could be interested in coach transport, and which service characteristics are most convincing in addition to travel time and travel cost. For this purpose, we designed an online stated preference survey and collected data from 274 Belgian respondents who occasionally travel long-distances by coach for business, leisure or visiting friends or family. Our results show that travel costs or prices are a dominant factor determining the preferences for coach transport. But in addition to this, other so-called quality-of-service attributes have an impact on the willingness-to-pay for coach transport. This holds for ample leg space, catering, Wi-Fi (especially for business travellers), and the presence of an individual entertainment system (especially for frequent travellers). Because we accounted for the interaction between such service attributes and different groups of travellers in terms of trip purpose, travel frequency and age, our results also offer insights to coach operators into different travel market segments