Investigating college students’ choice of train trips for homecoming during the Spring Festival travel rush in China:results from a stated preference approach

This study is to investigate college students’ choice of train trips for homecoming during the Spring Festival travel rush, which is triggered by two facts in China that the annual Spring Festival travel rush has been challenging the national transportation system and that the high-speed railway in China has made a great progress in the latest years. To this end, a stated choice experiment was designed, where four hypothetical train trips (two conventional and two high-speed train trips) consisted of a choice set. A survey based on this design was carried out, where 2768 valid observations were collected. Given the potential correlations within alternatives and the heterogeneity of respondents’ preferences, a latent class nested logit model was established and estimated, in which two classes were identified that one payed more attention to economy while the other cared more about services. The estimation results answered the questions that which determinants and to what extent of these determinants have influence on college students’ choice of homecoming train trips and who are more likely to choose high-speed train trips. In addition, this study also provides analysis of willingness to pay and market share changes